There's something magical about it to me - the darkening of the world, the bracing cool air, the attendant love of warmth and coziness. It's a season that's rich with associations - the newness of a school year, the warm kitchens full of fresh bread, soups, pies, the crunch of leaves and the impulse to explore. I love the rain, atmospheric and soothing and grim all at once somehow. I love the preparation for winter - relishing these days when being outside is a brisk pleasure and beginning to think of how to prepare for the cold, and who you'd like to stay warm with when the snows come rolling in.
"Fields of Our Home," Tallest Man on Earth. This album has quickly become the soundtrack for fall 2016...
It's been a busy week - rushing to get a conference paper drafted amidst a slew of meetings, and on the heels of a weekend away to Provincetown (photos and a video likely to come in the next few days) that left me without much time to reset and prep for the week ahead. Hence the silent blog (though who knows, maybe we're trending towards a more-silent blog in general in this lull of travel).
But today was a marvel. After sending my paper off, I met a friend for tea, made a grocery run, and stumbled across one of the only bottles of wine that I know even remotely well enough to know that I like it (Domaine Leon Barral, a Faugeres wine that is funky and delicious). I came home to bake bread and throw together a curried squash soup. Made plans to see an avalanche of wonderful people (some of whom I haven't seen in ages, some who I've only met in the past month or so) back in Chicago next weekend. Texted furiously about how Crazy Ex Girlfriend is probably the best show on television. Made the first Manhattan I've ever made for myself (pretty delicious) and sampled a digestif that my friend Mike recommended.
In short, it was a perfectly full and perfectly ambling day, exactly the balance of active-but-not-frenzied that makes me happy.
Autumn is this beautiful season where decay somehow feels like the promise of something new. I feel that this year more than ever. I'm just happy, and that's pretty grand. Feeling the love of my friends, a world alive with possibility and newness, reconnected to my playful, outward-focused instincts, feeling a core of calm as I face a year of unknowable and unpredictable happenings.
I'm not sure exactly what this post is for or about. To commemorate a lovely day, I suppose, and to mark a season that makes me happy and hopeful. To continue to celebrate the rediscovery of my sense of self. To put a little something up until I have time to cobble together a Provincetown post (Provincetown is so weird and nice you guys). But mostly it's about what I'm happiest being about: gratitude, a li'l bit of wonder, and a big dash of being open to whatever mysterious things are headed my way.
Plus, it's October, which means it's practically Christmas! Hokey smokes, you guys!
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