My November Guest
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grady
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so ryly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.
by Robert Frost, 1915, from “A Boy’s Will”
I absolutely love this poem. Frost’s November guest is melancholia, and for those of us living in the far North, blue moods, gray blahs, cynicism, even depression — definitely a little something which returns each autumnal cycle. And though the time changed this weekend for us — two more weeks for you, U.S. — and has given us a last reprieve before the real dark closes in, it’s hard to get up in the dark, and hard to come home in dimness. It helps that right now it’s not raining, but nothing is proof against sorrow. Nothing cures the winter blues, except for the sun coming back. If we could get out of things like this on our own, there would never be Solstice celebrations, and Christmas would be properly celebrated in March or April. (What shepherd worth his crook watches his flocks by night in the snow? I ask you.) Instead, we find our own happiness this time of year in the north, making a meal of crumbs, and a sun from specks of stardust.
We count our blessings. We give thanks. We hold onto what brings us joy. We string together shiny bits to reflect what little light there is, and flash ourselves Morse Code messages across the darkness: This, too, shall pass…
What makes me happy today: I have found knee-high boots that I like! Shopping doesn’t normally gladden my soul — okay, four out of five times, if I have to actually shop, I do a lot of dragging myself around, whining, and shuddering from Too Many People syndrome, but I am well content to have found these (mail order, which is Cheater Shopping, but whatever) boots in not one color, but two. And thus ends my boot-shopping endeavors for at least six years.
Second happy-making thing, in this the time of our yearly sorrow: Leaves. Because of a massive cold snap in October, we have color like wow and oh my. I am obsessed with taking pictures of a tree outside my window that is doing nothing in particular. It’s not even one of the best ones, but when the sun shines on these cold mornings, it just glows.
(You should know that approximately twenty-five minutes after I took these pictures, it was overcast, and two hours later it was pouring. The weather here truly does change on a golfer’s backswing.)
The third good joy: Pumpkin. As previously whined on this blog, hard squashes are not New World foods, so the UK does not know from pumpkin, except in specialty shops where they sell it for a £ a pound, and my does the price just soar. However! Much like with Google, you can find nearly ANYTHING on Amazon! Amazon UK has unearthed some dusty cans of Libby’s from somewhere in a warehouse probably in South Africa (!) and is sending them out to me. And I am gladdened with the thought of pumpkin bread.
And fourthly, candy canes! – another not UK thing. I have not purchased any as no matter how many lights are up here, it is not yet that season, but I know now that I could. Amazon again. I never buy books there, but random imported food? Yes, yes.
The fourth joy of this season, and really, any season is, of course, books. Cybils reading is trucking along; I have nine books on order that I have finally been able to beg, borrow, and steal from other libraries in the city. Recently I read — in a book that I didn’t particularly enjoy — a rather funny statement. The character’s mother believed that “any book was a Good Book,” and thus any building that protected books was a sacred place.
Libraries as sacred. (And from that point of view, what a variety of strange gods libraries shelter.) A point to ponder.
Those are my joys, this particular moment; feeling my way through the season of darkness, I know my questing hands will find others.
What about you?
