Wow. Just wow. It’s so crazy it’s already October, isn’t it? I feel like summer really flew by this year, even though it lasted the exact duration it always has, and always will. I mean, I only got three beach days this year! I usually do four! Where has the time gone?
Well, it hasn’t gone anywhere, really, given that time is simply what a clock reads, and our clocks have become so sophisticated that the entirely fabricated construct they represent can be accurately measured to the second over millions of years. But still—I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s already October.
Can you? Can you fathom that Halloween, which falls on October 31 every year, is almost here? Soon after that will come Thanksgiving—which has fallen on the fourth Thursday of November since well before I was born—and then it’ll be the holiday season already! It’s almost the end of the year! Winter will arrive before we know it, even though we do in fact have the truth and reality of Earth’s continued 365 ¼-day path around the sun readily available to us.
God, I just—it’s insane. It’s absolutely insane. One minute I was sweating on a hike upstate in July, and all of a sudden, here I am planning a hike upstate next weekend to see the leaves turn. Fall is here! It absolutely snuck up on me, even though I’m 32 years old and have lived in the tri-state area my entire life.
Once I get past the outrageous notion that summer as I’ve always known it is over, though, I do have to admit—I love this time of year. Don’t you? The bite in the air, the crunch of the leaves, the decorative gourds, the sweaters, the blankets. It’s so comforting. After all this time, an established concept that is commonly understood as the fourth dimension alongside the three spatial dimensions, I still find myself surprised by how quickly autumn sweeps in with its soothing embrace.
Maybe one day I’ll get used to it, the way time operates in a fixed sequential fashion that upholds our understanding of reality. Maybe. But come on, you have to admit—this is pretty wild. We’ve just emerged from September, which followed August, and before that, July, and before that, June. That’s already happened! Absolutely bonkers.
Ugh. You know what? No. I’ll never get over it. Never. The fact that we’re already here, in October—it blows my mind. Not the idea of my own relative impermanence and insignificance in the greater cosmic dance of time and space, the truth of which has historically thrown some of the most brilliant philosophical minds into total despair. No, that doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, it doesn’t even occur to me.
What really gets me—really eats at me in this very moment, a fleeting point in this consistent abstraction we call time—is that it’s already October. That’s it. That’s what I just can’t comprehend.
Oh! That reminds me! I better reserve a day to go apple picking before it’s too late. Silly me. I always forget!
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