Joe: You’re funny. You take pictures of empty streets and trees with no leaves on them.
Kathy: It’s winter.
Joe: Not quite winter. They look like…November. Not autumn, not winter. In-between. I like them.
from “Three Days of the Condor”
I was born during Easter Week on what Catholics call Holy Thursday. The Last Supper presumably would have taken place Holy Thursday night, as would Jesus’s most intense moment of doubt in the Garden of Gesthemane, and perhaps his arrest. If, like me, you mark the week as running from Monday through Sunday, Thursday is smack dab in the middle: the work week not yet finished; the weekend not yet arrived. The pause in the middle. In-between.
I like November. It’s the last month before the full onslaught of winter arrives in the northern hemisphere. Death approaches but hasn’t yet arrived. In the southern hemisphere, of course, it comes just before midsummer. The month before Christmas. The month of “almost.” November also has my two favorite holidays: Thanksgiving, which is about gratitude and sharing, and Armistice Day (the original name of Veteran’s Day, a term I refuse to use; it’s a long story). Armistice Day is the only international holiday I know of that marks the *end* of a war. I know there’s VE and VJ days, but Armistice Day still has a humility to it, a “My God, what did we do?” character.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Happy Thursday. Happy November.
Wonderful. Thanks for sharing all this. Love your characterization of it as “The month of ‘almost.'” That’s perfect. I don’t think often enough about Armistice Day being a mark of the end of a war.
Contemporary Contempt 
Joe: You’re funny. You take pictures of empty streets and trees with no leaves on them.
Kathy: It’s winter.
Joe: Not quite winter. They look like…November. Not autumn, not winter. In-between. I like them.
from “Three Days of the Condor”
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Never seen it, but that strikes me as true.
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I was born during Easter Week on what Catholics call Holy Thursday. The Last Supper presumably would have taken place Holy Thursday night, as would Jesus’s most intense moment of doubt in the Garden of Gesthemane, and perhaps his arrest. If, like me, you mark the week as running from Monday through Sunday, Thursday is smack dab in the middle: the work week not yet finished; the weekend not yet arrived. The pause in the middle. In-between.
I like November. It’s the last month before the full onslaught of winter arrives in the northern hemisphere. Death approaches but hasn’t yet arrived. In the southern hemisphere, of course, it comes just before midsummer. The month before Christmas. The month of “almost.” November also has my two favorite holidays: Thanksgiving, which is about gratitude and sharing, and Armistice Day (the original name of Veteran’s Day, a term I refuse to use; it’s a long story). Armistice Day is the only international holiday I know of that marks the *end* of a war. I know there’s VE and VJ days, but Armistice Day still has a humility to it, a “My God, what did we do?” character.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Happy Thursday. Happy November.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wonderful. Thanks for sharing all this. Love your characterization of it as “The month of ‘almost.'” That’s perfect. I don’t think often enough about Armistice Day being a mark of the end of a war.
LikeLike