Summer is gone already and this mix may have landed differently when it was released back in August. The melancholic tones are just more pronounced here in October when it’s getting dark earlier and mornings are chilly. It doesn’t exactly make me nostalgic for the summer, but maybe for a summer yet to happen. Maybe next summer?

It’s not that Summer 2021 wasn’t good. It’s not that it wasn’t bad either. It was the standard adult-life mix of good and bad. Yes, health issues did arise and they got me thinking a lot more readily and realistically about mortality. There was that one night in the hospital in July, going septic from infection, when it really seemed like it could go either way. It’s funny how easily acceptance came and that’s not funny-curious either. It was just funny-humorous because how was it supposed to happen? How did I think it would feel? Like simply falling asleep? No pain? No discomfort?

The curious part though is that there was no fear. There was no denial. It was all kind of just, “okay then. It’s been a good run.”

Acceptance came just that easily.

But summer passed and I didn’t. I got to spend a few days sitting up in bed in the company of people who love me. People who didn’t want to see me pass. That was good. In that respect and in the months that followed there was the knowledge that there is love in my life. I am not alone out here and I am guilty of forgetting that sometimes because it does feel that way sometimes. I often feel alone. Not lonely but alone. It’s not an unpleasant feeling. It’s not a longing, nor an ache. Perhaps it would feel bad were there not the knowledge that I’m not really alone. Not without people who care.

I don’t know, but I’m not lonely. Often melancholic like this music, but never lonely. Never, ever lonely. It hasn’t always been that way. There were those days way back in time when it felt like the sky itself was crumbling and collapsing. Maybe that was the drugs, but the cracks were visible. The collapse was visible. The end was visible. Those mornings of dread are so far gone now it could be someone else’s life or someone else’s memories. They are so long ago that they feel fictional. They weren’t fictional insofar as feelings can ever be more than fictional. I felt them for sure, but of course feelings aren’t facts, as The Crocodiles say.

Feelings aren’t facts, and however and whatever you’re feeling at the moment, this too shall pass. This too shall pass.

This too shall pass.

This morning shall pass as certainly as the summer passed. You will pass. I will pass. People will feel some kind of way about some of it. Some may write something or make music in response to the feelings, but it won’t keep us in the present.

Anyway…