In love with today.

Today was the kind of day most people don't like: rainy, overcast, cool. I don't think the sun came out for one minute. But I loved today, every minute of it. Instead of dismal or dull, I thought of pearl gray and muted. The rain made a lulling sound on the pavement and I could hear the creek rushing outside my window. The air was cool enough so that I could turn off my horrible, noisy window AC units, and the curtains billowed and snapped all day. Outside my window, the wind tossed the branches of the maple, and I could see a few bright crimson leaves dancing among the green.

I think I might have reverse seasonal affective disorder. I don't like summer. I find the unrelenting sun, the forced gaiety, the heat to be oppressive. My mood perks up with the autumn, with the crispness in the air, with the cosy sweaters and jackets and boots. With color. Autumn means Christmas, and Christmas means my birthday and James's. After Christmas comes the snow, if we're going to get any. I enjoy spring, the miracle of new leaves, new buds, new warmth, but it seems so pale and weak next to the lushness, the magic of the fall and winter seasons. There is something ageless and witchy and pagan and wild about this time of year. Turning inward, homeward, drawing closer to the hearth. It feels like a veil has been lifted between this world and the next. It reminds us that this world we think we've mastered is wild and unrestrained and chock full of things that are far beyond our ken.

THERE is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

-Bliss Carman