There is this strange disjunction between the changing of the month and the technical truth that the season has not changed — that summer will not become autumn until the 21st of the month; September-summer then, is its own micro-season, cold nights, warm, dry days. I associate this month both with being a student, and now, with being a teacher. New York changes too, of course. Students are suddenly everywhere, hundreds of thousands of college students — enough for an entirely new city. Suddenly tourists are gone, young Americans have returned; the composition and texture of city-life are revolutionized for another nine months. And this is a dark, beautiful September, this year — I hardly remember a more beautiful Labor Day; I hardly remember a time when the fate of human civilization seemed more precarious. Not since 2001, perhaps, has the local weather, in the northeast, where I’ve lived my entire life, so belied the suffering and disfunction I read about in the news. I was 11 years old then — in September 2001; now I am 28 years old, old enough to feel a touch of irony in the fat, lazy late summer. Biblical floods in Texas, social disintegration in Venezuela, perhaps nuclear war in Korea — what does this mean to the monarchs and bees hovering over the milkweed flowers in my mother’s garden today? Nothing, nothing at all. Today is a day like any other.
