Sleeping later than the weekdays.Cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Fall colors raging rampant. An entire afternoon with nothing to do but exist and be together. Bursting organ (instrumental, not anatomical) choruses. Sunday best. Out for walks. Resting. Reading. Eating whatever whenever. Afternoon naps. No responsibilities or obligations. Sunday dinner. Ice cream. Fruit pie.
All the things that make Sunday fabulous.
Yesterday was fall (the season is currently fall, but yesterday was especially fall-ey). It was brisk and overcast, and the leaves looked like a screensaver on a loop—they just kept falling. The wind smelled like the forecasted rain, as we drove across a half dozen Chicago neighborhoods during rush hour. We pulled up to a red light in our big fifteen-seater van full of college students. Because we sit higher than everyone else, even in the middle lane there was a clear view of the Boost Mobile store on the corner, and the blow-up, one of those tall stick men that waves his arms back and forth and flops both ways. While we were sitting at the light, a big guy (lots of ice cream kind of big, not lots of weight lifting) wearing a black shirt came out of the store. The shirt had printed on it the words "man of the hour." He slowly bent over and picked up the electrical cord at a joint between the black cord of the blow up guy and the orange extension cord. In his hand he had a piece of duct tape. It was about a foot long, and he was trying to put on the joint, probably to keep the joint dry in the coming rain. The wind was blowing it around and he kept trying to straighten it with his already full hand.He frowned and chewed his bottom lip.
Then the light turned green, and I couldn't watch the end of the story.
This is why we need writing. Writing is like the Instagram of the literate world. Writing is how you record the stories that you see all around you every day. The beautiful seconds, things both poignant and gentle, the moments that bring tears to your eyes and you're not sure why.
A picture says a thousand words. But a thousand words can tell a story that brings delight to your heart, or puts a knot in your throat, or fills you with resolve to do bigger and better things.
And we need those emotions. We need writing.
Fall is writer's season. Winter is full of short days of gray skies and cold wind, punctuated by the short thrill and glitter of a fresh coat of snow. Winter is reader's weather; all it begs is a cozy blanket, a hot beverage, and a thick spine. Spring is a universal sigh of relief, across profession and personality, as the heart and the soul remember that cold is not the only temperature. Summer is working and playing weather—for playing just as hard as working. But fall, fall. Fall belongs to the writer. The crisp nights, the sun-warmed noons, the leaves that rustle louder and louder as they change colors. The colors that defy even imagination and leave us stunned with their humble beauty. Fall is the writer's because everything about fall is worth writing about. The sunrise that creeps later and later into the morning, so those of us who sleep past 6am can actually see it some days; the smell of dust and must and fresh chill, and the steady stream of leaves wandering to the ground that prove Isaac Newton right once again.
There are many schools of thought about the best environment for writing. Some prefer the middle of the night. Others want the calm of a long summer day. The gray of poverty to stimulate the imagination, the sparkle of riches to write about 'what is,' the open room with a desk and a chair and sheets and sheets of cream paper and a smooth pen. But left out of every description is the most important part: fall. Fall makes the soul sing when the body must continue routine. There is good to find in every season—but it's easiest to find in fall.
*What's your ideal writing place? I'd love to hear from you.