All this love

On September, change, a touch of blue, and loving it all. Oh also I made you a playlist.

I’ve always loved September. I came into the world here you know.
We’ll see how that turns out for us.

But that’s not the only reason.

I always liked going back to school, even though I didn’t have a particularly good time there. Our animal is given to a kind of cruelty. I did not like growing up.

But I did like to learn. I liked structure, and work, and very big sweaters. I liked when the heat of summer broke and gave way to autumn, if you could call it that in Southern California. It felt like something changing.

My relationship to change has not always been the best. I have not always rushed out to greet it, or ride it graciously. I’ve been resistant. I’ve been afraid. But I have always loved September. You feel the air begin to turn. And there’s a touch of melancholy in it that I simply feel at home in, whatever else is true about me. The sky can be beautiful even woven with clouds. I’m learning to love this part of me, too.

So I made you a playlist, for the first time in years. Pretty things, yes, but not without a mood, a little bittersweet. A little blue. A little bit of breaking open, the kind of songs you could as easily sing to as cry, if you’re into that kind of thing. I am.

It’s September.
I can be what I want.

Also look at this poem.

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Heart/mind
by Laura Kasischke

A bear batting at a beehive, how

clumsy the mind
always was with the heart. Wanting
what it wanted.

The blizzard’s
accountant, how

timidly the heart approached the business
of the mind. Counting
what it counted.

Light inside a cage, the way the heart —

Bird trapped in an airport, the way the mind —

How it flashed on the floor of the phone booth, my
last dime. And

this letter
I didn’t send
how surprising

to find it now.

All this love I must have felt.

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Now get out there and feel some feelings. Don’t forget to breathe.