this is the time
when I’m ready to learn
something new,
when I yearn for a new lesson
a fresh notebook,
the weight of an expensive
hardcover text…
this brain of mine
has been programmed
to expect
a fresh start each september,
new teachers
and unexpected surprises,
cool breezes,
and the wonder of a vast
body of knowledge
ready to be imparted…
but now, september
carries a feeling
devoid of substance
in a world where learning
ends at the brink of adulthood
when new discovery
becomes bullshit meetings
and stupid emails,
conference calls,
and projects you never get
to choose for yourself…
when your guide to life
has an agenda of their own
and all you can do
is go along with it…
I wish learning was as valued
in this world as I was
made to believe…
all I am is disappointed
because when you get
caught reading a book as a child
you get a pat on the head
and a smile for being precocious
and bright — but get caught
reading something of your own
as a grown up
and you get questioned, side-eyed,
like how is it possible
that you have so much time
on your hands?
so much time for such a luxury,
how could you waste
all that mental energy
on the imaginary,
the conceptual,
when there are real
things to be done?
no, this isn’t the land
of scholarship anymore —
how could you…
how dare you expect
to get anywhere
clinging to the lost
hope of the intellectual —
these aren’t the times
to have a mind!
these aren’t the times
to let thoughtfulness shine!
so I float away
on that crisp september air
and I now leave the learning
to dreaming
and let go of that
lost september feeling
Garbage Notes:
I love greeting the fall, but lately I’ve had mixed feelings about September. So much of my love for this season is wrapped up in a sort of nostalgia for what the cooling temperatures and the falling leaves have traditionally signaled in my life. That is, the arrival of a new school year or new semester.
There’s a sadness to the idea that being a student has to inevitably come to an end. No matter how hard you try and no matter how open-minded you are, it’s very hard to live a life where every fall you get to start a new chapter of learning.
Life tends to constrain you and constrict you and twist you up into a shape that isn’t as amenable to absorbing new things. We surround ourselves with work and routine and pattern and ritualistic expectation. We fill our lives with tedium and monotony, and trade new adventure for complacency and security.
This poem isn’t a poem of denying adulthood. This poem is one that questions the assumption that adulthood must result in the absence of curiosity or discovery. Can we still find time to read and to create and to research new topics that we never thought about before? Can we still be thoughtful and attentive and focused on expanding our minds, even when it’s our bodies that are starting to break down?
It’s up to us to keep the spirit of September alive and be perpetual students in our own hearts. You may not be starting a new day of school. Maybe you no longer have a locker or a dorm room or a thesis to work towards. But you still have a choice.
You can do little things to go against what society always dictates for us. You can fill your life with constant learning. Fill your life with poetry and fiction and history and science and art and dance and languages and everything your brain quietly craves. Don’t leave learning to dreaming. Learn and play as much as you can, every day.
Franco Amati 2023
I love the shift this poem takes a third of the way in. I wasn't expecting that. I didn't dive into literature and start writing until I was 38, five years ago. Literature and learning have emphatically changed my life. For the better, of course.
This part of the piece was a gut punch: these aren’t the times to have a mind! /these aren’t the times /to let thoughtfulness shine!
I embrace September and the fall as yet another season and reason to learn. I just don't like it getting dark so soon!