No Healthful Ease

The end of October naturally follows into November, and I'm still getting my bearings after the shutdown and scattering of NaNoWriMo a few years back. From the outside, the collapse appeared—bluntly—catastrophic, and for those of us who'd seen it from early days, it was especially painful to watch. NaNo was the nursery that fostered me, that gave me the courage to try to write something large and messy and wild and surprising and just not worry about it.

I'm proud to say I won every November I participated, seventeen in all. I tried the off-season writing (Camp) but it never really stuck with me the same way November's event did. I credit the lack of daylight, the turn in the weather, the general gloom to fostering the mood to sit down and scribble, even if Novembers in my part of the world are generally mild, often sporadically sunny, and all around tolerable.

There's other events, indie or sponsored, commercial or personal, and I admire folks for keeping the flame alive. But I'm still a little sad, as the Halloween candy hits the stores, as the mornings grow darker and darker, as the rains come and the leaves drop and our suburban wildlife is stockpiling for the season. I laid in my plans and plots for the winter, too, preparing for a month of frantic scribbling, cherishing every free moment... and knowing that I was part of a worldwide community of Wrimos doing the same.

November is nigh, and I've developed the habits, but there's still that primal urge to start gathering words, and this November and all those after, there's a little sadness where there once was only celebratory joy.

🧩🦏 

No!

        No sun—no moon!
        No morn—no noon—
No dawn—
        No sky—no earthly view—
        No distance looking blue—
No road—no street—no “t’other side the way”—
        No end to any Row—
        No indications where the Crescents go—
        No top to any steeple—
No recognitions of familiar people—
        No courtesies for showing ’em—
        No knowing ’em!
No traveling at all—no locomotion,
No inkling of the way—no notion—
        “No go”—by land or ocean—
        No mail—no post—
        No news from any foreign coast—
No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility—
        No company—no nobility—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
   No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
        November!

— Thomas Hood

🎶 How I first heard this poem