it's fall and back-to-school

It's officially fall.  Yay!  I remember as a student, I didn't care much for summers.  I looked forward to fall, and the new school year.  But, it's been many, many years since I've actually been a student, so I thought, why not go back?  To school. 

Okay, I'm not officially going back to school, but am going to take some writing classes again next month.  I realized that I need it.  It gives me inspiration, and it makes me feel more alive when I'm around other writers.  And since I've been in this quest for learning, I've been going back and reading through the anthologies I kept from college.

I was an English major, but honestly, I felt like a fraud most of the time.  I was an English major, who didn't have much time to read and write.  I worked two to three jobs at a time all throughout college, and thus, working 40-plus hours a week and taking a full course load, was a little tough.  As much as I wanted to immerse myself in the literary college world, I couldn't.  I just needed to get through school, and on with the next phase of my life. 

So sadly, when I think of college, that's what I remember.  Working.  When all I really wanted was to be a student.  An English major, who sat in the library or on the school lawn for hours, reading.  Or writing.  And maybe, that's why I've been looking through those anthologies.  Because I felt I missed a lot of it the first time around, and I know I must have kept them for a reason.  So that maybe one day, I could go back to those stories and poems, and immerse myself in them.

Or maybe, I just needed to go back to those anthologies so I'd remember.

Remember why I love(d) literature.  Because as I touched and looked through the pages of those anthologies, I realized that maybe I wasn't so out-of-touch with the literary world after all.  I saw the sentences I underlined and the notes I made on the margins, and remembered how I loved Beowulf and Paradise Lost.  And as I looked through the books on my bookshelf, I remembered why I fell in love with Baldwin and Wright.  Why Tolstoy's Anna Karenina touched me in such an unexpected way.  And why poems have a way of speaking to me and making me understand the things that didn't make sense.

I underlined and highlighted this line in Beowulf: "Fate often saves an undoomed man when his courage is good."  Interesting.  I wonder what I must have been thinking of when I underlined, highlighted and put a star next to that sentence.

Anyhow, I'm excited for this season.  For my new school term.  (wink wink)  For my upcoming trip to DC and the Big Apple.  And to hopefully finishing a draft of my book.

What are your plans for this season?