Another Summer Ends...Another Year Begins

September has this magical quality of new beginnings mixed with melancholy that makes for a feeling that is hard to describe but familiar all at once. Last week I started my 18th week of school and other than feeling pretty old there wasn't anything really remarkable about the experience. I picked out a "first day of school" outfit, packed a lunch and tried to get a good night sleep before the first day of classes. But these last few weeks haven't been without reflection. Maybe all we have in life is the present. Try as I might to remember all the first days gone by there was something lacking in the memories. As the years turn on the memories remain but they fade and their meaning isn't nearly as powerful. Sometimes I wonder when certain memories will leave me completely, and the sad part is that I won't even know they are gone. I imagine the brain sorting through memories; shelving the specials ones, rewriting the painful ones and discarding the ones not recently pulled. It makes me sad as the years roll on, friends come and go, people change, I change and every year it seems a part of me dies and another part is born. Maybe that is a bit too dramatic but the point is we are creatures of change and as important as change is it is hard. Thinking about change, thinking about perspectives...people who once seemed so important you rarely talk to, new characters come into your life and captivate you but it seems all too plausible that they too could at some point become obsolete.