Accelerating into September

“The unlucky ones are those for whom summer was ending, in their thoughts, even as it began.

We, the unlucky ones, are cursed with the capacity to see the ending in every beginning. It is one of the dismal faculties some people some people develop after they first discover their own personal time is constantly accelerating. Later on, if they turn lucky, they are blessed again, not with the blessing of childhood, which is that each moment can seem eternal and complete for itself, but with the blessing of wisdom and philosophy, which can conquer the foreordained passing of a precious thing, like a summer.’’

-- From the September section of In Praise of Seasons, by the late Connecticut editor and essayist Alan H. Olmstead

Works for now

"Allegory of Winter'' by Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter.

"Is there any better tonic for living than a climate that ranges from 15 above a night to 35 above in the afternoon, that has air both windless and dry, that has the sun rising though frost mist and its moon lavishing itself on a white world?....

"We are forced by pleased experience and reviving logic to concede that a perfect day in any one season is the equal of a perfect day in any other season. This, just as we had formed the rigid opinion that winter was one season we could do without.''

-- From In Praise of Seasons, by the late Alan H. Olmstead, a Connecticut-based editor and essayist.

'Fundamental structures'

"Cairn in Snow,'' by Caspar David Friedrich.

“After the winds and storms of autumn have lashed the trees to penitence, there sometimes comes a large-flaked and otherwise inconsequential snow which gives to the trees and their landscape the sequel gift of innocence. It was in such a landscape, on the morning of such a fall, that we began having our thoughts about the end of one year and the beginning of another. The snow seemed helpful, in that it blotted out the bright surface shapes of specific recollection in favor of the more enduring and powerfully molded impressions of fundamental structures and meanings.’’ 

--The late Alan H. Olmstead, a Connecticut essayist and editor, from his book In Praise of Seasons.