As I write this column, which will be born in September, although three quarters of it is officially summer, with the autumn air of September, August is dying in my hands. But it is not. September is autumn from birth. And it’s all because he’s working and has a watch.
Perhaps we insist on calculating time as a way of forgetting that this is impossible. But even we do it badly. In reality, we count time like someone calculating losses, as if every year we live is a waste or carelessness. It seems to us like someone who is afraid of the river drying up after taking a sip, like someone who does not think about how the weeks pass so slowly, how the years pass so slowly, it seems like consuming, not living it. Without acknowledging the fickle character of the ancient gods of time, how is it that the minutes lag behind but run so fast over the decades? And so we start counting the days on January 1, when the year actually begins on September 1, when most people return to routine, when factories, workshops and offices reopen. September 1 should be the beginning of the year. If, as my friend and colleague José María de Loma happily noted, “August is a Sunday of the year,” we have no choice but to conclude that September is a Monday.
I look out of the window that I look through while writing, sometimes looking inside, as I do so many times. The summer light stopped at my door. The light sometimes behaves like this, lingering in front of my house for a while, spending hours lying on the lemon tree and then leaving, always talking about himself, who knows what other door, which branch, which summer. . Maybe he did it as a goodbye, maybe it was his way of telling me that he would come back, that he would always come back.
Meanwhile, on the beach, the last girl of summer wraps a sudden shiver in her towel. Although it is not yet autumn, the blue of the sea is oxidized and the light falls on the sand like a copper plate. It’s time to start over so that everything returns to its own existence, to its rigid and blind normality. Soon we’ll pack up and start showering with hot water, forgetting a bottle of water in the fridge. Soup will regain its dominance at the family table, and afternoon coffee will no longer be iced. Everything will seem old and lived-in because September is one and it repeats itself, but we get used to the idea that a different September starts each year. It takes its place forever and without rest every September. Kids go back to school like someone who’s done their shift.