Beautiful things in November
- Elena. Seeing my oldest friend and getting to squeeze her when I picked her up at the airport that morning.
- My niece three chapters away from the end of her book, finishing it while she ate dinner and not letting me leave until we could talk about it.
- A swan swimming across a pond in a forest, autumn foliage all around, reflected in the water with the blue sky above, while my dog plays with his bestie and I chat with my friend.
- The sentence "What in the nonna mondo is this?" from a Kelsey McKinney blog from the series where she and Chris Thompson attempt to recreate the technical challenges from the Great British Bake-Off for Defector.com.
- The light! The light! The autumn light. The drought has been hard, but the aesthetics of a true blue sky and sunlight bouncing around off of the yellows and reds of the leaves - the best foliage we've had in years and for all I know maybe the last good year of it we'll ever see - it's just dazzling.
- A short bigeye, a little frowny-faced fish that looks like a drawing of a fish by a 6-year-old at the aquarium where I volunteer. What a balm for my grief after the election to be able to go there and have tangible things to do: the animals to be fed, filters to be cleaned, floors to be scrubbed.
- Night sky: dazzling Jupiter, Orion striding across the sky to remind me of so many nights when I was young with my friends who are still my friends today, late-summer nights on the river in Ontario and crisp October nights back in Boston.
- The scratches on my dresser. It belonged to my grandfather, and served as closet as well as bureau. There were nine people in five rooms, three small bedrooms, no closet storage to speak of, so clothing that needed to be hung hung from wire hangers hooked over the pulls on the topmost drawers. If I ever got the rest of the dresser restored, I think I'd leave those gouges just as they are for the story they tell, the reminder of the lives that came before mine.
- I got home and Fionn (my cat) and Petey (my dog) both wanted to sit next to me on the couch, so I put Fionn on my lap, Petey curled up by my side, and we all had a nice snuggle.
- A pair of wild turkey hens were resting under a tree in front of my friend's house. When I pulled up to pick her up to drive to work, they stood up and looked over like 'hey look, our ride is here!'
- A grouping of leaves, each its own shade of ochre or yellow, artfully scattered across a gray square of pavement. Or no, a lemon yellow wash across the bottom of the sky at sunset, reflected back in the creek, cut by the black silhouettes of trees and stones, dark watercolor shadow reaching into the water flecked with white like a little finger of star-spattered sky reaching into the tableau.
- Petey
- Take your pick, but it's all about light: the buttery yellow glow coming through the multi-story windows at the end of the warehouse building where I do my volunteer work as the sun is getting low in the sky straight outside them; or the sunset horizon rainbow as I was leaving with the waxing moon bright in the sky above the edge of the building, the drawbridge on the nearby river framing the opposite side against the wash of plum and rose and cerise and tangerine and lemon and all those tasty pastels.
- Neighborhood crow caw-ing a hello from the top of a light pole outside my house, silhouetted against a sky so blue it hurts.
- Full moon through the trees over the low, low tide in the harbor in the waning afternoon light, sky a wash of stripes, pink, purple, blue.
- Almost fractal mantle of ivy on a tree, leaves of all sizes but one shape, backlit nearly gold by the sun or deep cool matte green against the trunk.
- Plant shadows against a wall, light leaving layers, dry plants with stem and flower and leaf, inky shadows, soft shadows, layers on layers.
- Building aglow, lined with holiday lights, against the darkness of the open harbor.
- Friends I haven't seen in too long.
- A kaleidoscope of creole wrasses.
- Petey sniffing the orange-brown leaves piled against a gray stone wall smattered with patches of verdigris-colored lichen.
- Charcoal-colored prints of leaves past left on pale gray pavement, a handful of yellow leaves interspersed.
- Look, I know it's a lot about leaves this month, but autumn! Because today it was these larger serrated yellow leaves contrasted against a backdrop of smaller leaves in deep eggplant.
- My glorious nieces.
- The building around the corner that is being renovated, brickwork all freshly painted lemon yellow trimmed in leaf green.
- Christmastime at the theater! Already gorgeous restored lobby and lounge elevated by the addition of a tree and lights, garlands and wreaths.
- Silly smiling face of a curious porcupine pufferfish.
- Statue of the Virgin Mary standing out in the rain, gray on gray, gray concrete lightly verdigrised with mold and lichen.
- Opposite sides of the sky not long after sunset, brilliant Jupiter and gleaming Venus not far above the horizon line.
- Burnt-gold bursts of stick grass popping out of glassy silver-blue water at the harbor's edge.
