August Atonement?

For much of my life I have been mildly religious, intuitively spiritual and embarrassedly superstitious. I have never been known to fear stepping on cracks or to avoid walking under ladders. But I'll often crack my window when driving over the Bay or Golden Gate Bridge. That's also somewhat practical since, were either bridge to collapse and I arrived alive at the bottom of the bay alive, the only way to escape and survive is with a window partially open to enable an escape and swin the the surface.

Another superstition I can't shake is that things come in four year cycles. Some cycles are more dramatic than others, and it's fitting that the U.S. Presidential election, summer Olympics and Leap Year -- all seemingly unrelated -- come in this cycle towards the end of summer. After seeing the Bill Clinton speech tonight and thinking back to living in Manhattan in August of 1992 and being filled with unbridled optimism about change, throwing cynicism to the wind, I am leaning that way again.

The first eight years of the new Millennium have been the personally most horrendous years of my life. After years of struggling professionally and financially, I achieved my greatest success during this time but simultaneously experienced the greatest personal losses of parents, friends, aunts, uncles, best friends, beloved pets, and loves gone awry. All of it left me with a desire to just hibernate and take no risks.

That's a stance I've never taken in life, and I am beginning to feel myself reversing that cycle.

Another theory is that in such years, the transition from August -- typically the most brutal, deadly month of the year -- there is a sudden shift into September which marks a number of important anniversaries for me. It is fitting that Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, usually comes at this time.

In the course of barely three days, I have heard from half a dozen people I thought as being "lost" or that I'd betrayed or had betrayed me. One was with me the night of September 11, and it seems several things have never been resolved between us. It feels that many hands that have been numb for too long have been reminded of and want to celebrate life and are reaching across the void. Autumn, my favorite season of all awaits and is beginning to feel like a beacon of life.