20131001.0741

I have in past years referred to the month of October as Death Month, for it has had an unfortunate tendency to claim the health or life of members of my family.  Both of my grandfathers died in October, for example.  I spent many Octobers ill, and indeed contracted mono at the end of October during my first year of graduate school.  I recall that some rather unfortunate diagnoses came through in October, as well, and what I recall of the family legendry notes that many of the dates of death in earlier generations fell in the old eighth month.

The past months--nearly a year now, actually--have produced quite a shift away from that.  Deaths among those I have known have been happening throughout the year, not confining themselves to the early autumn.  Major upheavals have taken place time and time again since December, and most of them have been far other than pleasant; even those that have been good have been stunning in their magnitude.  Hair-tearing somehow comes to mind.

So as October begins amid a governmental shutdown for me (since I live in the United States), I find that I cannot accord it the same label I have given it in years past.  I do not know that the label will not be accurate--although I very much hope it will not be.  I do know that it no longer serves to differentiate this month from the others, hence my refusal to use the label again this year.  And I cannot say that I am entirely pleased with the change, particularly given the price paid for making it.

Such prices are charged and paid whether or not those who are billed and whose accounts are debited are aware of them or consent to them--as public events have served to return to mind.  I know that my own reserves have been quite depleted of late, sometimes by my own expenditures and for my own goals, sometimes by fees incurred along the way.  And I have trouble balancing accounts; there are factors involved, compounded interest and taxes and penalties and various other numerical trickeries, of which I am ignorant.  (Some will say, no doubt, that it is the foolishness of my seeking training and work in the academic humanities that has left me thusly ignorant, and that I deserve to suffer therefore.  Fuck those people.)  I am not certain that I trust that matters balance out; I feel very much as if I am in the red, as if I have paid more than I have earned, and that I will never be able to earn enough to offset the expenses that I incur simply from being in the world.  Those I take on in the attempts to find work at all--I have long since abandoned any pretense of being entrepreneurial--add to the burden, as I increasingly think true for all.

Where there is any debt relief, I am unsure.  If there is any such debt relief, I am also unsure.