i’ve always thought that the month of november receives an unfair amount of criticism.
it’s been described as the monthly equivalent to thursday: long and torturously boring. vaguely close to the holidays, but not close enough for its approximation to actually be exciting. the idea of what’s to come urges us to slog through, bleary-eyed and miserable, coffee cups clutched bravely in our hands. this is what i like to call the november hope/despair continuum.
- a desperate clinging to festivities that are ages away; anticipation of joy as a substitute for actual fun. draping christmas lights from trees with more than a month to go before the 24th. dreaming of the starry-eyed wonder that december brings. gritting your teeth against the cold and waiting. hoping.
- a miserable surrender to november’s soggy chiaroscuro. trudging home through soupy, 4pm twilight. salt and slush staining the boots you pulled from the closet last weekend. succumbing to the frosty air that will remain for another four months, at least. despairing.
whether you choose to hope or despair, things slow down in november. i think that’s why people hate it so much. the three following months are similarly cold and dark—even more so, yet they don’t get nearly as much flack. but november is the inception of winter; it is the month during which summer’s heat, stretched out days, and cloudless blue skies are officially rendered distant memories. a smear of incomprehensible, hegemonic white looming in our rearview mirrors.
something happens to me amidst the unending rain, the oppressive, steely clouds, and ever-encroaching twilight. i am filled with the sudden, overwhelming desire to read a book over and over again until i can recite the first chapter from memory. i want to watch a movie, then the directors cut, then the cast interviews and the media that influenced it. i want to choose a recipe i like and make it every day, until i’m so sick of it that i can’t stand it anymore. i want to use something until it’s spent; to drain it of all that it’s worth. to swallow it until i choke. i want to press the object of my interest against my chest until it warps to accommodate the slats of my ribs and the wet shudder of my lungs—i want it to become part of me instead of simply using it as a way to distract myself from what i am.
even though i’m still a teenager, i find myself contemplating the concept of teenage obsession with nostalgia. i never want to let go of this feeling, the purest way to love something—this urge to unhinge my jaw and consume. not for a fleeting moment of empty pleasure, but for the long haul. the act of loving something should add to what you are, should braid itself around your capillaries and nestle into the crenelations of your brain.
when i scroll through tiktok, twitter, etcetera, i’m berated by an endless cycle of products, concepts, and ideas, but i can’t escape the hollow notion that these things were not meant to be loved. they’re meant to be snorted, injected, smoked—their use does not extend beyond that rush of serotonin received after you click purchase, the flash-bang fire of neurons into the void. when we melt into a social landscape that instructs us to never stop searching for the newest, shiniest thing, our ability to understand ourselves and others, our world is warped—our ability to love has been degraded by a culture of hysterical availability and consumption.
there is so much of everything all the time that actually paying attention to one thing is hard for me. it’s hard, sometimes, to not just open tiktok again and watch another hour of random unboxing videos for products that i don’t want or need. but, in winter, it gets easier to pry free from the syrupy network of hyper-connection on which my brain has grown so dependent. instead of semesters, dates, or google calendar notifications, i want to navigate my life non-linearly, like the thin, palimpsest pages of a book, ink bleeding through the cheap paper. i can place moments within the month i first loved my favorite band, the weeks during which i binge-read all of tolstoy’s works, the year i spent with a book that changed my life. loving something so much that you’re willing to know it transforms the concept of time into something physical—something that smells like pulp and wood glue, that flops open to my favorite page, dog-eared and adored when i hold it flat in my hands. i want my life to be lit by periods i spent watching cartoons or perfecting a london fog.
it’s a lovely feeling to drink a cup of tea and remember who you were last november.