#541 Dragonber

Hyperion September 1, 2009

I thought August 2009 was going to be my biggest month ever. Various personal milestones were coming due, and those attached to numbers and other mathematical formulae that held great meaning and resonance for me, if not to anyone else. For years I had looked to August '09 as my coming out party, and two years ago began to prepare certain plans and goals of mine.

To cut a long and (of questionable interest to anyone else) story short, plans fell through. What I expected did not happen.

On August 31, about 10:30 at night, I sat musing to myself on the month. I told a few friends that it had been my Triple Witching Hour, a time when the bills my body, mind and spirit racked up all came due, and all at once.

With 90 minutes left in August you would think I would be celebrating, ready to put the brutal month behind me and roll into September.

Not quite.

For many reasons, September is historically my worst month. Bad memories. Sad anniversaries of the departed. The echoes for September 11 (which may be cliche for some, but have not gone away for me.)

Most of all, one of the days tries to kill me each year, or at least cause me grievous injury, physical & otherwise.

The point is - September can cram it with walnuts, you know? As I sat there, sliding out of August into another potentially dark September, an idea began to form. Feedback from Friends, Facebookies and Twitwits helped shape it, and then it was right there in front of me:

DO WE REALLY NEED SEPTEMBER?

The answer, in case you are a little slow on the uptake, is no. What has September ever done for us? Go on, I am waiting. Labor Day? Bah. A holiday that is hypocritical right in the title! Plus, growing up, it always meant back to school the next day. (Not anymore, apparently, as schools continue their annual competition with Car companies and Christmas merchandisers to see who can begin earlier.)

Now, I can just hear some of you: But Hyperion, you can't just eliminate an entire month! You've gone mad with power!

(The lesser-known but equally dangerous "Mad with Flour")

Fair enough, conveniently-timed Voices in my Head. Eliminating an entire month forever (Forever ever?) is an act of extreme hubris, and I usually save up my E.H.'s for a rainy day. I am not destroying September forever. At least not now. I am however, canceling it, and replacing it with something else. An interim month, to get us through to October. (When I first announced the plan by friend Lionfox mistakenly thought we were straight into October, and was halfway into some sort of bizarre whiter-than-white boy dance before I disabuse him of the notion. The idea of just eliminating entire weeks? You have to be pope to try that.)

Now, before I get into the replacement month, I wanted to offer soothing to those who are unlucky enough to be born in the cruel month that is/was September. You fine-if-cursed folks are in fact going to miss a birthday this year. Nothing I can do about that. I can cancel a month and replace it, but I cannot just declare you to have been born in this new month. That would be a total mockery, and Hypey don't roll that way. But I think I have a solution for all of you.

Let us say your birthday is September 15. Let us further suppose your name is Crimson Sue. You may celebrate Crimson Sue Day on _____ 15, replete with party, cake and presents. And while you MAY NOT call it your birthday, feel free to allow the more easily confused members of your family to go ahead and think it is. (Especially if this would affect gifts.)

But I have not even gotten to the best part. Because you do not get an actual birthday this year - I am granting you official dispensation not to turn a year older. Did you hear me in the back? This means --for honest and true, not just the cover-story your crazy Aunt Sally maintains --you can stay the age you are now for another year. Not bad, eh?

(YOU try depicting a year without aging! Not so easy, is it, Miss Smartypants?)

So, we have covered the abomination that is was September, and its cancellation this year. I have handled the politically thorny issue of birthdays - and before I forget, we will have a holiday where Labor Day once was, too. And it will be an actual holiday, one you are proud to waste. What is left?

Oh yeah - What's the new month?

Glad you asked.

Roll back to August 31 again. It is now just a few minutes before midnight. I headed outside to speak to the Moon. You can learn a lot from the Moon, and I needed advice. I was fairly sure canceling September was a good move, but was not sure what the new Month should be. Something awesome, that helped erase the bad taste of what usually came 'round this time of year. Unfortunately, the sky was completely clouded over; not a lunar orb in sight. Dejected I scanned the sky, hoping against hope moonlight might peek through. (Even Venus putting on airs would have been fine.) But there was nothing.

I also discovered something else right about then, and that is the fact that I could not walk. That I had temporarily forgotten this beforehand is testament to the powerful idea that was canceling September. (How I actually got out there I will never know. Adrenaline? Possibly I flew?)

At any rate, I had no choice but to literally crawl back up the sidewalk and front porch steps to the door. I pondered my scraped knees and thought, "If this isn't the metaphor of my life. Somehow I walked out there, clueless of what was to come, thinking I had it all figured out, and then forced to crawl back on my hands and knees."

It was a dark moment friends. The kind of dark moment that could sure use the Moon shining through the clouds, giving off moments of clarity left and right. Sadly, that did not happen.

(Artist's depiction of Hyperion Crawling. Clearly an artist whom Hyperion had not paid)

But here's what did: I made it back. Regardless how I got out there, and the pain I was in, and the sheer impossibility of walking 20 feet and climbing a few stairs, I made it back to the house. Yeah, I crawled back, and yeah it was concrete, and yeah I may have some cockroach guts embedded permanently in the fresh scrapings of my knee, but the point is I made it back.

Sometimes winning means merely surviving, and that brings us to the month we are currently in. As you read this, it is the second day of a month you never heard of, but are going to be so glad for. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dragonber.

That's right - this is a month named after Dragons. Why Dragons? If you have to ask that, I am not sure anything can be done to help you. Get out of my month!

Dragons are the greatest thing any of us can think of. Combining the gargantuan size of Earth's past masters (Dinosaurs), our first elemental fear/fascination (fire), humanity's most fundamental spiritual belief (magic) and humanity's longest held desire (flight), Dragons represent everything great and terrible about our world that we have never been able to express.

And - it must be pointed out - one does not often see Dragons any more. As in, virtually never. This is because--whether in actuality or in our belief --Dragons have been attacked, driven out of our world, our minds. The modern centuries have not been kind to Dragons, in any sphere. They are now more likely to serve as corporate shills and drug caricatures, no longer ruling battlefields but Chinese buffets, no longer spreading fear and fire and wonder with their breath, but reduced to smirked at children's fables and a monkey-tailed idiot named Goku. (Don't ask.)

People, I am here to tell you that Dragons are more than that. They may have faced tough days with humanity's (and insects') onslaught, they may have been knocked down, no longer able to fly, and forced to crawl.

But they survived.

And this month, we are going live as Dragons. That is why in the year Two Thousand and Nine I am replacing September with Dragonber, the month of Dragons.

(No Dragons were harmed in the making of this picture, although a best boy grip did get the hair on his left arm singed)

To help celebrate and understand our new month, I have transformed my site International______Day. The September holidays do not apply this month (you can find them back in the 2008 Archives if you want to reminisce.) Instead, I have broken up Dragonber into 7 four-day sections. (The wise among you immediately leaped to the notion that we are left with 2 missing days. Be patient. They will be explained when the time comes.)

Each four-day section I am calling an Ember, in what will be known as the 7 Embers of the Dragon. (September itself means 7th month, which if you count on your fingers, is a bit odd, though more on that another time. Anyway, the 7 Embers are a way to not completely forget September, since sept + ember....you get the idea.)

These 7 "Embers" will each be aspects of the Dragon, sort of their essence, if you will. Make sure you tune into International Day often to see what we have cooked up.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

The best thing you can do is to tell everyone you know that September has been canceled and replaced by Dragonber. Help edumacate people who don't know, and convince skeptics. Get the word out to September birthday people that they can still celebrate while retaining a bit of youth. And most of all - Embrace Dragonber! Learn about the 7 Embers, tell others, set a castle on fire, whatever your thing is.