There’s a storm out there making for land. It is like a runaway train. You can feel it when you breathe. Breathing in an absolute silence to produce an absolute exasperation. It’ll jab and then it’ll use the hook. And it can dance like a ballerina. It has no intentions of allowing you to regain your feet. It prefers you down on the mat wondering what day of the week it is while you fish around in your blood-filled mouth for a couple of free teeth. It didn’t come to prove anything to you. It came because it knew that there would be nothing to stop it.

The only thing September is good for is the artificial inflation of clothing and stationery prices. Things you could get for maybe half as much in June now put you in the poorhouse until November. The world, by some strange process, begins to revert back into a state of controlled mania, subduing that animalistic anarchy that ran rampant through the streets only weeks before. Everyone is recovering from some kind of abnormality, some kind of euphoric withdrawal, lamenting over vacation photos and letters from that summer fling which will forever represent some absolute, 48-hour perfection at some hotel in Antigua. No pasts, no pertinent details. You were someone else there for a while. But it’s September now. Mob rules.

The kids go back to school and sit in those classrooms catatonically staring out the windows into the late summer afternoons. Teachers lecture in alien languages while the managers of various Dairy Queens pore through employee records trying to figure out which summer-staff member is most likely to make a career out of serving ice cream.

The word responsibility takes on a whole new meaning. In July it meant that you made sure you had a good time. In September it means that the universe has got you under its thumb.

I was thinking of quitting music and attempting to ride around the world on a giant, oversized Big Wheel. After checking the most recent edition of The Guinness Book of World Records I’ve discovered that it’s never been done before. People have ridden a lot of things around the world, but never a Big Wheel. Now I’m quite aware of how ridiculous I’ll look doing it, but there’s always a price for glory. Who really cares if you record records, play shows, and make music videos. In this day and age people can put that sort of thing together in a matter of milliseconds. Think of how original it would be as a conversational piece at a party.

“Yeah, I rode a Big Wheel around the world. What did you say you did again? Dentistry?�

This is the kind of thing September should do to you. You should refuse to pay your credit-card bills, eat whatever you want, drink in excess, and throw wild Caribbean theme parties every Saturday night. Life would be like a Tom Robbins novel on uppers and everyone could stop pretending they have somewhere to go.

I don’t have anywhere to go. There, I said it. Not one single goddamn place. My name’s Matt and I have nowhere to go. Though, come to think of it, Six Flags would be agreeable. Roller coasters, above all things, are my greatest love. They don’t really go anywhere either.

It’s called melancholia. Supposedly people get this ailment in the fall and winter when everything’s bleak and life just isn’t worth living anymore. In spring and summer you’re a self-contained carnival. Come fall you just can’t find the strength to carry on. You’ve been kidding yourself long enough, you figure. Maybe they can freeze you for half the year so you just have to put up with yourself during the warmer months. That’s why I’m riding a Big Wheel around the world.

I’ve planned the whole trip so I will reside in an endless state of summer. Which should mean that I’ll be in a good mood from now on. Which should worry you. Lost in such a euphoric state I’m sure to start penning songs about money, songs about parties, songs about how cool I might look in a rented Ferrari. I’ll play shows in Monaco and tour the world in a huge, rented cruise ship. Never knowing that I could feel such freedom, I will willingly become all that I once detested.

Then again, maybe I won’t. If you’re out there, if you’re seconds away from ordering the Tony Robbins self-help tapes, if you’re thinking of rendering yourself helpless because it seems the path of least resistance, just remember what you were taught as a child. 1] STOP, DROP, and ROLL. 2] NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER. 3] there is no 3. I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes thinking. But there is no 3.

The Boomtown Rats hated Mondays. The world unknowingly hates September. It’s like consciously allowing yourself to return to servitude. We do it without knowing, like so many other instances that now offer us nothing but regret and embarrassment. Things like spandex, MilliVanilli, and professional wrestling. You’re cringing.

Have you ever seen pictures of yourself from the past? There’s no escaping it. Everyone, at one time or another, buys into something without giving it much thought. For my generation it was parachute pants, pointy leather boots, hair gel, and all those strange dances that Dave Genn knows so well. Some of you out there might have missed all that. Some of you might not be old enough to be considered so stupid. But in fifteen years you’ll look back at yourself wearing your ridiculously big pants and wonder what you were thinking. Maybe you’ll wonder why your underwear was always showing or your hair was blue and purple. And if those things just happened to be like that in a September, or even several Septembers, won’t you look the fool.

The thing I could never understand is why they put October after September. Home to Halloween, October is not only good for treats but provides ample excuse to return to that summer-like non-you. Halloween provides the ultimate release of the year. For one night you get to dress up and act like an idiot. And if you do it correctly you can impersonate someone that you don’t like and get them into a shit load of trouble. The Dead Kennedys got it right in that song. That and Forest Fire.

So you’re probably asking yourself, as you most assuredly must, does he have a point? Is he going to take this somewhere or be conveniently ambiguous so as to escape some kind of finality. Does he do it on purpose? They’re valid questions. Questions that I one day hope to answer for you. But as far as September is concerned let me wrap it up by saying this. Either you do or you don’t. You either are or you aren’t. You either pump or you slump. Either you have it or you don’t have it. And if you don’t, is there some kind of class you can take to get it? My name’s Matt and I have nowhere to go. I, like the roller coaster, always end in the same place. Right here, it would seem.