Love List: November

running wolves | living the dream | long midwinter glooms

November always was a melancholy month. All day, as I sit shivering at my desk, the beech tree outside my loft-room window shakes its brittle, leafless branches at clouds of faded grey—even the jackdaws have abandoned it. Hours of daylight are dwindling fast and by the time I leave the house, it is almost dusk. The heavy sky opens then—sadness melting into water, raindrops clinging to my cheeks like tears. Pavements glisten in the beam of passing headlights and beneath my coat hood, my brown hair curls in the damp.

November always was a melancholy month and yet that’s where its loveliness lies: ‘these dark days of autumn rain’ wrote Robert Frost, are beautiful as days can be’.
I let them envelop me, the beautiful, damp days. They pull me close, like the soft, lichen-green mohair cardigan edged with gold thread that I found secondhand last week and have wrapped around myself every morning since. I warm my hands on my coffee cup and watch the rain trace a slippery path down the window glass. I am thinking of all the different places that my book research has taken me over the course of this long, strange year—each of them beautiful, each of them damp. I am thinking of someone who is far, far away. I am thinking of the page, pale as the November sky, waiting to be traced with words.

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My final book research trip is this week and it’s an exciting one! If you’re a member of my paid community, I’ll be sending you a postcard soon…

Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving this month: