septembers to remember

it’s been brilliant. i mean the weather. summer is not ending here in the far east yet. our september resembles almost mediterranean’s i always long for. much as i feel sorry for my friends in england where summertime is too short (or rather, around only sometimes?), we japanese deserve this long late summer to make up for the unbearable last two months, don’t we.
*
i love this season and the word “september” itself. sound-wise, it makes me feel sentimental. it is now inevitably associated with the tragedy of “september 11”, though. in buenos aires, there is a blue bottled white wine named “septembre”. i used to buy one. i distinctly remember the september of 2004 that i flew back to england from argentina: i jumped into summer from winter.
*
my porteño life had a wrong start in early may. mr dreamer, who brought me there and was supposed to show me a new aspect of life, could not change his louche lifestyle. i’d already decided to leave him, but he fell ill; i needed to look after him for some two months. then, when he made a recovery i couldn’t leave him alone in buenos aires since he had no money, even one peso, in his pocket. i know he had a half sister and half brothers in germany and canada, still, no real family to rely on. he eventually admitted having no savings, no assets or no concrete plans to make a living. his vintage car and a false hope were all he had. i took him back to england.
*

another reason i flew back to england, not to japan directly, was my personal stuff i’d left with jonathan, mr dreamer’s close friend, in berkshire; jonathan had offered me some space in his grand residence to store it. mr dreamer also had left his car there, so we went to berkshire first, telling jonathan i would arrange my stuff to be shipped shortly. mr dreamer picked up his little black mg from jonathan’s garage and we drove together up to london where his another long-time friend byron lived. we had no home or base in london any longer, but we needed a place and a little time to sort things out.
*
they once worked together: byron was art director of a high brow art and fashion magazine that mr dreamer sponsored as publisher. the prominent pop artist allen jones did the cover. subsequently, byron became a successful photographer, especially for erotic ones. we’d met before in london. i noticed his liking for styling himself as a lanky grey-haired rocker. just like his eccentric looks, his mysterious victorian house intrigued me. it was decorated in elaborate eclectic taste: william morris wallpaper for the quest room; a huge bath room and grapevines bearing fruits in his tiny conservatory. anyway, byron put us up. and his limits came a few days later. he was well-accustomed to enjoy his own company, so he kindly removed us from his london home to his country cottage in yoxford, suffolk.

*

i’d never been to suffolk before. as we headed north-east, classically bucolic scenery appeared in front of the car. i was thrilled at my stay in the countryside as much as i fretted about my future. we reached byron’s idyllic cottage. with honeysuckles around the gate over the meadow, it looked like a fairlytale. indeed, it was such a lovely retreat. during our week-long occupation, i’d be basking in the september sun, listening to twitters from nearby woods and looking up at the constellations and the milky way in the pitch black sky to make the most of the last days of summer.
* in retrospect, i think i was waiting for mr dreamer and myself to come out with something. something like a nicer comma at least? otherwise, a decent full stop between us. time got us nowhere after all. to mr dreamer’s credit, he was always very compassionate, generous, brave and tough, but he was hopelessly iffy about his own life when it came to honesty. he couldn't face the reality. so he went on drinking again until he emptied byron’s wine cupboard, only looking back on the vagaries of life. sure enough, it was high time for both of us to move on. that september swept me back to japan in the end.
*

september comes and goes every year. i can’t remember them all. meanwhile, i’m pretty busy remembering all the birthdays of my daughter, my mother and my best girlfriends…phew! there are so many birthday girls in september somehow. *