August 18: Latent Echo, Freer Passage, New Cartoon

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.

Scrooge is visiting his childhood school with the Ghost of Christmas Past.  He is a little reflective, a little melancholy.  It's not a very happy description.  Mice and drips and despondent poplar.  It's pretty bleak and depressing.  Mournful even.  I would expect a description like this one in the stave featuring the Ghost of Christmas Future.  However, the Past, at this point, is just as dark as the Future.

It is late summer in the Upper Peninsula.  The leaves of the trees are beginning to turn color.  The temperatures in the morning dip into the forties instead of the sixties.  During the day, the temperature may reach the mid-seventies, if we're lucky.  Yes, autumn is right around the corner.  School will be starting back up in a couple of weeks.  The university is already gearing up for the influx of undergrad and grad students.  It's a time of change.

I'm a little depressed about the change of seasons.  I've really enjoyed this summer.  Hot weather.  Running in ninety-degree heat.  Swimming.  No papers to grade.  No outside obligations.  The Olympics.  It's been a really good four months.  And now that's all about to change, and we all know how well I do with change.

I know, by this time next month, I will be comfortably settled into a new pattern of normal.  Teaching will be routine.  Work will be routine.  I will be getting ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving.  It will no longer be a time of leafless boughs and despondent poplars.  It will be a time of costumes and candy and turkeys.  It will be a time of looking forward instead of looking back.

Saint Marty isn't looking forward today.

Confessions of Saint Marty