Thank God for the Autumn

This is my favourite season, truly. I’m so happy. Today it rained heavily all morning and I wrote in bed and then made French Onion soup with homemade croutons and just the right amount of comté sprinkled on top.

Summertime makes me uncomfortable, it always has for some reason. I can enjoy the heat to a point but it’s not my natural habitat.

I have been dreaming of crisp autumn walks, green and gold, sunshine, a chill. I have spent the autumn months historically, horse-riding, shopping for groceries, writing in old pubs (bonus points for an open fire), drinking hot chocolate and wearing fur trimmed jackets, scarves and jumpers. It’s my most productive, most contented, most natural state of self. I like a little cold and dark. I feel myself returning to myself again.

I have a new perfume that I can’t stop sniffing. Babylon by Penhaligon’s which I’ve wanted for the last three years and finally got around to buying. I love the way it starts off spiced and delicious and then becomes a sweet subtle earthy vanilla that clings to my hair and neck. It’s not bombastic but quietly seductive, enveloping. Almost as if it could be a combination of a natural skin scent, shampoo, perfume, lipstick, and a trace of saffron milk drunk a few hours prior with breakfast.

I’m a great lover of Gothic literature, currently reading The Monk, and next on my list is Carmilla. I read Rebecca, The Secret History and Wuthering Heights like it’s a religion, every year when the weather turns.

I’m also entering an especially creative period, which brings me the greatest joy. Things happened in my life a few years ago and it felt like I travelled underground. Creatively, it was a strain. I was frightened of my own imagination and looking desperately for noise and distraction. The muse didn’t really come and I was worried had left me forever. But now, I am bursting with stories and the ecstasy of creating worlds. I am working on two novels, a short story and various other projects. I’m feeling for the first time in many years like a bottomless well.

I handed in my notice at my part-time receptionist job, which had become more like full-time since the summer. I wasn’t writing and needed money so thought it a better use of my ‘writing time’ to sign up for more shifts than sit staring at an empty Word Document. But now I haul my laptop along on my commute and savour every moment I have a chance to write.

Once again the future is uncertain but limitless. It’s hard to keep going without the feeling that anything could happen. I have never been tethered much to security as a principle. I have craved it more with each passing year, and perhaps it’s indicative of reaching a certain sense of security in other ways, that I feel the need to roam again. I have the strength to be my true self which is fearless, reckless in pursuit of my desires and sensually present, wringing the beauty from life again.