"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" by Bob Dylan
I'm moving back to Norman tonight. That's right: Tonight. Travelling a 90 mph straight shot under the cover of night to make my untrumpetted return.
The summer is over. The season wears on, but its spirit has been irreparably broken. I sit here in mid-August, when Oklahoma has been known to have 100-degree days coupled with insufferable humidity, and for the last five days there has been a 50% chance of rain, clouds, and upper-70s to mid-80s. If that doesn't bode the end of summer, by God, I don't know what does.
As much as I hate this rotten weather, I must say it's exactly the way I would choose to end this summer if I had the choice. Summer ending just the way I felt through must of it--a constant gloom with the ever-present chance that everything could go to hell and immediately be washed away in a downpour. How's that for your classic metaphor?
This was my summer on the edge. Not so much that I lived all that dangerously, but that I had a hard time coming to an understanding with this summer. I just felt that at any moment an unexpected something, anything, could happen that could send me into a freefall to oblivion which not even a return to school could rescue me from.
I like to say that this has been a summer without a theme, but that isn't true at all. My summer, I believe, touched on some part of the human experience. The loneliness. The fear. The fact that, with all my freetime and imagination, I wound up waking up at noon and playing disc golf everyday from the beginning of July should reach people on a gut level. This is what can happen to anyone without a plan.
I was recently asked to define failure for myself. The answer I came up with was that failure and doing nothing were the same thing. Failure is not in the result of trying, but in not trying at all. By that criterion, this summer cannot be judged a failure, although, plenty of my readers will think otherwise.
I've tried plenty this summer. I was willing to try much more, but fate and resources caused me to fall short. From the two-day job and George Carlin, to Mass Media and American Politics and disc golf, from fantasy draft and "fishing," to walking and therapy, my summer can be called eclectic, hectic, schizophrenic, but never a failure.
The summer is over. The season wears on, but its spirit has been irreparably broken. I sit here in mid-August, when Oklahoma has been known to have 100-degree days coupled with insufferable humidity, and for the last five days there has been a 50% chance of rain, clouds, and upper-70s to mid-80s. If that doesn't bode the end of summer, by God, I don't know what does.
As much as I hate this rotten weather, I must say it's exactly the way I would choose to end this summer if I had the choice. Summer ending just the way I felt through must of it--a constant gloom with the ever-present chance that everything could go to hell and immediately be washed away in a downpour. How's that for your classic metaphor?
This was my summer on the edge. Not so much that I lived all that dangerously, but that I had a hard time coming to an understanding with this summer. I just felt that at any moment an unexpected something, anything, could happen that could send me into a freefall to oblivion which not even a return to school could rescue me from.
I like to say that this has been a summer without a theme, but that isn't true at all. My summer, I believe, touched on some part of the human experience. The loneliness. The fear. The fact that, with all my freetime and imagination, I wound up waking up at noon and playing disc golf everyday from the beginning of July should reach people on a gut level. This is what can happen to anyone without a plan.
I was recently asked to define failure for myself. The answer I came up with was that failure and doing nothing were the same thing. Failure is not in the result of trying, but in not trying at all. By that criterion, this summer cannot be judged a failure, although, plenty of my readers will think otherwise.
I've tried plenty this summer. I was willing to try much more, but fate and resources caused me to fall short. From the two-day job and George Carlin, to Mass Media and American Politics and disc golf, from fantasy draft and "fishing," to walking and therapy, my summer can be called eclectic, hectic, schizophrenic, but never a failure.
posted by TheJobey @ 8/17/2005 11:37:00 AM
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