The Fall

 

Early Autumn is kicking in and party season beckons: at least that's the way I would have characterised this time of year in my youth and early thirties. That too-soon dusk and the incipient sharpness of early evening air - although tonight it's still reasonably warm, to be fair - heralding in days past an evening of revelry, drunkenness and fun to be had. I still get that frisson of anticipation that goes with the turn of late summer into the fall, despite not really having any great desire to repeat the excesses of youth simply for the sake of repetition or continuity. The period of discovery in the particularities of nighthawk partying has long since passed for me; what was once new is now familiar and much less attractive, let alone sustainable. But I just hope that future generations will discover the magic that we experienced in our youth; go for it, suffer a bit, and grow as people, as a result. I fear that the current generation(s) are either denying experiencing themselves and voluntarily entering into early middle age arbitrarily, or are simply dissipating themselves rapidly toward oblivion unnecessarily: neither path strikes me as a healthy concomitant on the path from youth, through adolescence and into adulthood. The only logical resultant is a dysfunctional cohort of almost-adults, dependent on others, only some of whom will escape the limbo of suspended adulthood, as a result; if they survive at all...