Today is coming close to my favorite day of the year.
Saturday is Sept. 23. "Connor," you're no doubt saying, "why the hell are you so fond of September the 23rd?"
I'm glad you asked. It's the autumnal equinox, the day when the sun stands right over the equator and day and night last (more or less) the same amount of time.
People often look at me oddly when conversation turns in the direction of the autumn, because from time to time I can't control myself and explode with a short speech about how glorious the equinox is. Some shake their heads and casually make sure there's nothing sharp within my reach. My more aggressive friends usually tell me that I'm a spirit-worshiping Druid. No offense to any Druids in my readership.
There's no paganism in my family, though (so far as I know), and I have yet to sacrifice anything on this particular night. I just love it.
I love it because it's the great pole around which our years rotate. The whole wild exhilaration of autumn is around us all of a sudden, the sharp edge is in the air and we have so much to anticipate.
Of course, it also means that things are getting busier.
By the time this glorious day of equal day and night rolls around, the honeymoon is over. The University has finished flirting with us. The pre-nup is signed, we're back from Hawaii and it's time to settle down and start the laundry.
In the wider world, people notice time's passage by the signs of nature. As the leaves turn, we start to wear more clothes (with the exception of the barefoot people, I guess, although I've never really understood why they think it's okay to strut into class with their disgusting feet and wave them around while other people are just trying to take notes or fill out the crossword).
We mark time differently at the University, though. For example: The equinox defines the end of the period when it's okay to talk about what you did this summer (running the grand gamut from "I had this boring internship, but partied all the time" to "I wandered Europe like a rhapsodic Bohemian" to "I stayed in Charlottesville and took class/was an orientation leader/worked/annihilated my liver"). Instead, we're now talking about how tired we are.
In the ancient tradition of harvest festivals, people are swallowing coffee like water. I saw someone in Clemons last night (I was only there to get Dr Pepper -- don't judge me) surreptitiously pop a No-Doz and I almost cheered with delight at this clear sign of the coming of the fall. People have stopped choosing to sleep through class, and now actually need to sleep through class. Even the streakers have started to look a little bedraggled.
Which is maybe a good thing. There's always a little too much explosive insouciance in the streakers at the beginning of the year. Memorably, on the first weekend, I was standing outside a room on the northwest Lawn and was startled to discover an enormous group of people milling about at the foot of the South stairs to the Rotunda: obviously first-years, preparing to enact their first mad dash. The odd thing was, bursting as they were with the daringness of the young, the gentlemen had all anticipated the coming event by removing their clothes. The young ladies, in contrast, seemed less committed, and were still, you know, non-naked. So there was this sort of cocktail-party effect going on, except all the males were stripped. My maturity level was way insufficient to deal with this.
Of course, maybe they were right to abandon themselves to the natural in the rawest way possible. I don't know that I'm totally chill with that, but whatever. I just know that I'm perpetually glad that I get to celebrate the turning of my days and my years here with all of you, my friends. Just do me one favor: Don't get naked unless everyone else is, too.
Connor's column runs bi-weekly on Thursdays. He can be reached at sullivan@cavalierdaily.com.
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