nunoncastors

For reasons unknown and uncared for, my mood becomes ever more pensive as the nights draw in and the days dwindle into bright stubs nestling between drowsy evenings spent by the fire. I know I’ve always been subject to this change of mood and manner. Memories of twilight hours passed as a child, watching flocks of Starlings pulse and spiral in the sky above my house lead to recollections of quiet moments in the park, strolls down country lanes and a certainty that this has always been so.

I realise that there is something unbearably saccharine about all of this; the positive distortion offered by hindsight tends to ruin all but the most vivid of reminiscences. There’s a tendency to paint them to be some wholesome moment of inner peace or quiet epiphany, strip out the truth and leave a glowing ember of fuzzy-jumpered warmth to make you feel better rather than accept the situation as it was.
If you peer behind all the cosy self-delusion you’re usually left with someone drawn to solitude at the closing of the year, at least in those moments where it isn’t pressed upon them, and a quiet consideration of the melancholy that the angst-ridden are wont to ponder. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, it could be that seasonal affective disorder is at work and the lack of daylight drives them to become more introspective than usual.

Whatever the case may be, I’ve been making the most of the solitude offered by the autumnal months by busying myself kicking through rusty-coloured leaves and meandering along the river on those nights where the sky couldn’t be clearer or the air sharper if they were cut glass. I’m still dour and cynical but there’s something about the season that allays my usual manner and prompts me to appreciate a sky that always seems more azure, an air that feels more bracing and an atmosphere of, well, anticipation.

Happy Halloween.