It’s taken me a few weeks — in my defense, I’ve had both the death of a pet and being consistently overwhelmed by work, to the point where it felt as if I was only able to stay at my desk for roughly 90% of the time I was awake for days on end — but I am finally at that point of the year when I’ve remembered that fall and winter are my favorite times of the year. I’m hedging my bets by naming two seasons, but what I really mean is, the stretch between October and December.
What underscored the realization for me was walking home from the movie theater the other night. It’s a point now where it’s dark pretty much from 4pm onwards, making the night feel at once omnipresent and endless, and also oddly magical and unknowable. That felt especially true that night, which was one of those weird Portland nights that are both warmer than you’d expect and oddly misty, so that everything feels hazy and somehow welcoming as you wander past everyone going about their business.
It was late enough that people were flocking to the many bars I walked past (and I could hear the various types of music flooding out from the doors as they opened when I walked past: shitty techno, muddy guitars and twang, echoing jazz-pop), but also early enough that I was walking past families and couples as they left all the various restaurants after their meals, huddling together and laughing, talking, conspiratorially. Maybe it was the darkness or the supposed-cold-of-it-all but it all felt like end-of-the-year behavior, as opposed to people walking through the streets in summer where they take up more space and interact with everything around them more. This time of year is for people to hunker down and lean in, appearing and disappearing from the fog and suddenly illuminated by passing cars as they walk before vanishing.
All of this was soundtracked by the crunching of leaves underfoot, and surrounded by the orange glow of living rooms in houses as I walked past. I was reminded of how much I love to walk around neighborhoods during the holidays and see the colors of Christmas Lights everywhere. How the lives of everyone in those houses feels like it bleeds outside during this time of year, and what should be this dark, lonely, cold thing becomes so much warmer than it should.