No Pressure

The interwebs is a fun place. Some people last week were excitedly proclaiming it was now officially AUTUMN and therefore time for SPICED LATTES! Others, more dour, and thus, better informed, were trying SUBTLY to remind the first group that it was currently 90 degrees in the shade and that maybe they were being a tad premature. Which is what Americans do best anyway. We're first in everything. Especially when it comes to being six weeks early.

In the real world, the coming of the great September is not always a cause for celebration. Many new things have begun with a bang. A friend of mine who teaches both high school and college said he felt like he'd been drinking out of a fire hose all week. Deadlines start to come faster and more furiouser. I'd clean that last sentence up but there is no time.

I have a piano recital to give this afternoon, at the end of a week when I was preparing for two Sundays: our grand return to the sanctuary, and thus the large organ, or, if it is too hot, and the pastor decides we'd better adjourn to the social hall. Preparing for both possibilities meant having two preludes ready and figuring out who to get some of those anthems and whatnot to work on the piano.

Meanwhile, there is another concert in two weeks, with a different piece to relearn, and another full recital on the organ which isn't for a couple of months but needs to be prepared now. Also I'm teaching a class in a month, but the deadline for pitching the one that comes next semester is this week so that proposal will have to come first. And I'm trying to finish up a composing project while I still can which is pretty much not anymore. I'm out of time. Now!

There seem to be only two speeds in American life: busy and ridiculous. Busy is the one where we aren't all that busy but we don't want people to think we're communists or something so when people ask how we are we grin our best weary grin and say "busy" and they commiserate with us. The other form occurs typically near the beginnings of semesters, and at the end of them. Although in grad school I noticed that once things took off with a lurch they stayed at that level of intensity except they kept escalating through the end of the year.  It usually took about a month of summer to remember what it felt like to be human.

I'm not ready for that spiced latte yet, but I am looking forward to it. Metaphorically, of course (I'm not that into pumpkins). Despite all the hubbub, somehow autumn is still my favorite season of the year. Must be the weather. It's never in a hurry. This week they finally rolled out the weather we were supposed to get the last half of July.