Now that we've finished with that, I must apologize for being so long absent from this URL for so long. I shall simply skip the excuses and distract you with these lovely images of autumn here in Bronxville:
I think this little guy liked the sound of my camera shutter...
I was lucky enough to get a nice half-hour break in the rain to obtain these! This week is probably to be the doomed last of these colours, but it is a very lively one at Sarah Lawrence--this weekend is Halloween, which may be the best loved and most fervently celebrated of all holidays here, as well as Fall Formal and parents' weekend (we all know that they assign this weekend as family weekend on purpose, in some vain attempt to cut down on partying). I will be enjoying myself on Halloween with my housemates here, but this Friday, I have more important plans than a school dance: the Mister and I have tickets to see the wonderful Cloud Cult live in Brooklyn. Their September album, Light Chasers, is one of my favourites of the year, and presented me with a much-needed burst of autumn optimism earlier in the semester.I won't go too far into what about this album was so important for me, but I think it has to do with the end of a long spiritual search for the songwriter and the literal birth of new chance for he and his wife. His and the band's story can be found at length on Wikipedia, and it's compelling enough to warrant a read even if you aren't a fan. Something tells me that Light Chasers will be the last Cloud Cult album, maybe for a while, maybe forever, but I think it's a fitting end to a story that is both heartbreaking and deeply triumphant. I am looking forward to a good, hard, empathetic cry at this concert.
In other news, I have been holing myself up here, gearing up for the second half of this semester. I'm two-thirds of the way through Spenser's The Faerie Queene for conference work in Bill Shullenberger's class, and studying Symbolism at length for (get this) an eight-page paper written entirely in French! I must admit that this is a wholly masochistic mission on my part, and one that continually challenges me when I receive potions of it returned to me positively splattered in red pen. But I'm learning... slowly but surely.
I have also been cooking. Intensely. So much cooking. Some of my sweetheart's and my most successful experiments have been: sweet-potato-and-edamame pancakes with baked apples; acorn squash stuffed with grains, hazelnuts, and figs; eggplant, chard, tomato and rice casserole; butternut squash with butter and sugar (for desert!); leeks vinaigrette, which has quickly turned into "any steamed vegetable vinaigrette"; Perfect Miso Soup; and lots of homemade bread. Unfortunately, and this may be very cruel on my part, I haven't any recipes. The two of us have decided it's useless to write down recipes that we come up with--we never end up following them, and we often like to make things just once. But rest assure that they were all delicious, even if completely unreproducible.
I will be home for Thanksgiving weekend, which (hopefully) means that I will make something somewhat like these for my family and maybe have recipes! FOr now, though, I am off to read more George Herbert and teach my housemate Gabe to make bread... Pictures later, and certainly after this weekend!
