Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

November. One of those times of year, at least in New England, that serves to remind us of all the things we still haven't done in life, things that we really really really want to do. Illustrate a cookbook. Rewrite that memoir about books and reading. Start a new series of paintings. Find some decent curtains for the bedroom, because frankly the ones that are up there now have got to go. Save the world. November reminds us of stuff like this, even as she drains us of ambition, with waning bleak light and thin cold wind. Ambition to even move. Now, I myself am the kind of person who, if I haven't accomplished something tangible by the end of a day or a week, can get a little... down on myself, let's say. The work ethic I am dubious heir to means I can be unkind to myself and others if I feel I haven't produced in some way. And bullies of any sort appall me, in my own self and elsewhere. So what to do? Nothing. Sit with it, that November feeling. Consider it a great time to deprogram oneself, to allow oneself to simply be.

I'll let you know how all that goes. Because of course I could just need lots of extra Vitamin D. And a few more Democrats in office. Poetry might help, too.

One of my favorite hopeful thoughts about this time of year, the first line from the poem A Man in Blue, by James Schuyler:

"Under the French horns of a November afternoon..."