Character Study & Weather Story (Newsletter No. 11)

You like this person. In your eyes, they were always on the margins somehow.  Maybe they’re quiet, maybe they didn’t have the friends you’d consider intimidating, maybe they’re not as pretty. You think they’re nice and by default tit-for-tat logic, you assume they think you’re nice too.  But they seem wary, and you don’t understand why, you’re nice to them! But there’s something in you that they see that you haven’t admitted.  The condescension, the rat race, the fakeness and streak of self-centeredness.  You’re not the one for them.

Instead of weeding out red flags, you’re the one that has one growing straight from your head. 

***

Autumn

And Just like that, It was Abruptly Autumn.  I thought I would feel a little sad, but instead I feel cosy. In my jacket, the breeze is still easily kept at bay and the sun is still shiny. There’s an undercurrent of excitement, as if I’m about to get cider donuts and cider, even though I’m definitely not. As if the same Pavlovian response to the promise of new teachers, clicked open fresh binders and colorful highlighters activates even when the stimuli is long gone. That bittersweetness: bitter because there we go again with a whole slog of assignments to be obligated towards, sweet because through the slog of paperwork, dead leaves, and  crisp frost is the simultaneous trek into Christmastime. The loop becomes more and more dizzying, how did we end up here again already?