The French word for August, "aout," with a circumflex somewhere in that glot of vowels, makes me think of a cry--A-oooooooooooooo! A coyote sitting lonely atop a hill, howling at the moon, wondering where his summer went, and whether he should get a new Trapper-Keeper or just keep the old one that he drew all his good Metallica-related logos on. Aooooo! Back to School supplies thirty percent off at K-Mart!

I'm not going back to school, so I'm keeping my old Trapper-Keeper, a predatory enough name for what amounts to a three-ring binder with a picture of a kitten on it (in my case, anyway). I'm staying right here at work, where there is no three-month escape from routine, and today the reality of my servitude is sharp and acute and causing a tightness in my chest, right where my clavicle would jut out if I were the leggy supermodel I saw at the Trocadero on Saturday evening. Shandy and I stopped in there for a drink, and as we were lounging on the sofa nearest the door, in walked said leggy supermodel--really, she was probably just a regular, i.e., non-super type of model, but she was wearing a skirt the approximate size of a headband, and a top that draped open past her waist in the front and the back. She'd ringed her eyes in black kohl, to enhance (I guess) the skullular appearance of her head. She probably appears waiflike and ethereal in photographs, but in person, she was a little startling. Also: there's nothing that will make you feel like Lardella von der Glutton than sudden proximity to a leggy model, super or otherwise.

Where was I going with this?

I don't know. I am feeling melancholy at the arrival of August and my lack of freedom and the number of my obligations. Bubbling to the surface are a number of things that make me sad and will never be made right. The waning summer always makes me feel this way, thinking that the French were on to something when they gave the dying season a name that seems like a wail. The other seasons pass, but summer dies.

Star of the day. . .Beth Lisick