Originally posted 11.01.2005

Here we have the first day of my favorite month, my very dear grey, my lovely drear, which I begin by loving first for what it isn’t. It isn’t summer, lush and overblown and bright. And it isn’t for summer people, who are probably the majority—all those who like walking on the beach and getting caught in the rain. (I too like getting caught in the rain, but in the city, in an alley, with an umbrella. A big one. Preferably while watching rats.) It isn’t for grilling out or bike rides or lingering in a crowd.

The pitch and vibration of November are perfect for someone of darkling temperament: July is too bright, April too soggy, and February has little going for it save being short. But what November lacks in open-faced friendliness, it more than makes up for in sensuality.

I love November’s honest light, more true and less of an assault than summer’s burning gold, revealing late-autumn’s topaz hues in leaf-shed clarity. The leaves will fall, some driven by rain, others merely by their natural end, and many will leave behind imprints, ghostly photo-fossils in memento mori. This month the sky will descend, heavy with migrating birds, smoky and thick at the horizon. It smells of wood fires and seed pods—the same ones we’ll shake and rattle during the Bacchanalian watermelon dance six months from now—and of cold rain, dusty sweet decay, and first snow. What crosses the tongue as we toe into winter are tastes that make the rest of the year worth it: amber scotches, sherry, and cognac; black coffee and Russian caravan; acorn squash and sweet potatoes: all things deeply orange and yellow, even the greens tingeing purple. And it’s the best month to thank yourself for giving up vegetarianism in one word: roasts.

But what’s best is the way November touches skin, seeping in through plackets and cuffs, up hems and sleeves, through even the thickest thatch of hair to the scalp. It touches softly, without insistence, a trial kiss. Like love from a stranger, a polite benevolence that asks for no return.