Yay, Autumn

I have been a neglectful blogger lately - what with my advisor coming back, all visiting Britons going home, grants due, meetings to schedule and attend ... The upside of this feverish activity is that it is offically Free Food Season once again; I reckon I can scrounge at least four meals a week if I'm on my toes.

Yhis is my favorite time of year, and not just for the foraging opportunites it affords. All winter long I look forward to summer (we don't really have spring here, as such; it's just damp and cold; a period of waiting, waiting, waiting and then, bam!, extremely hot all of a sudden) - but the summer makes it hard to work. You feel like you should be outside, slurping up every last orangey drop of sunshine, basting yourself until lethargic and torpid. Then you go into the cold air-conditioned buildings and shiver because you are not wearing enough clothes, all the while haunted by the knowledge that other people, evereywhere, are on beaches without you.

But in the autumn my head feels clearer, the air is crisp and bright, and the sun is not so brassy. There is a hum of anticipation from the start of the school year beginning all around, redolent of fresh, unsharpened pencils and pristine sheets of notebook paper eager to be filled. All possibilities still, and no heavy coats to weigh you down. Not to mention the brightness of the moon as it rises over the Boston skyline, more golden than the golden dome of City Hall.

Listen! the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!
—Humbert Wolfe