“There comes a day, in the ripe maturity of late summer, when you first detect a suggestion of the season to come; often as subtle as a play of evening light against familiar bricks, or the drift of a few brown leaves descending, it signals imminent release from savage heat and intemperate growth. You anticipate cool, misty days, and a slow, comely decadence in the order of the natural. Such a day now dawned; and my pale northern soul, in its pale northern breast, quietly exulted as the earth slowly turned its face from the sun.”
Patrick McGrath, “The Angel”
(Yes, I have cookied this passage before. And I’ll no doubt cookie it again. It expresses exactly what I feel on a day like today. Fall is here, in the air if not yet on the calendar, and for this exultant northern soul it feels as if home has arrived.)