Lilly
November brings a full-blown Midwestern winter, apparently. The snow has become sleet since I was last outside, and it’s a literal slap to the face when I open the door. “Wasn’t I wearing shorts only last week?” I demand of a friend, teeth chattering as we make a mad dash for the dormitories. She’s buried too deep in her scarf to answer. Later I’ll pull on sweatpants and wool socks in a stubborn refusal to turn the heat on in my room, wrapping myself up in a quilt so that I won’t succumb to the urge.
November brings the peaks of the Taurid and Leonid meteor showers—shoddy seeing, though, compared to the Perseids in August or December’s Geminids. “Star party!” says one of my classmates, and we joke about how we should open up the school observatory on the key nights, even though telescopes are essentially useless when it comes to shooting stars. I’m beginning to move on from the subject academically, kept waiting around only by continued involvement with my summer institution; but in many ways, astronomy still has my heart.
November brings a fresh round of midterm exams, their jaws already open wide around us. My physics classes this semester don’t hold back; I’ll have a sit-down test for one and an oral exam for the other, one warranting a few nights of hardcore review and the other at least a week of frantic work that may or may not lead to the conclusions I want. The promise of half a week at home late in the month seems paradoxically more distant with every passing day. I find myself anticipating the semester to come already: new classes, new experiences, finally getting to take a course in religious studies or history like I’ve been talking about for ages. My advisor cheers for me over email when I tell him I’ve left an open slot in my schedule for this purpose. “You’ll get to leave the science building,” he writes, “Amazing!”
November brings Scorpio season. The turn of my own personal year. Nineteen ticking past and on towards twenty. It feels no different and yet like everything has changed. I light the fake votive I bought for Samhain and let its false incandescence wash my room in yellow, curl up in my desk chair for a little while, open eyes and empty mind. There’s peace to be found even when the world is hammering at the door to your head.
November brings reflection. There’s plenty of time for action, and it’s not like I don’t take it; a whirlwind of applications just beginning, exams and problem sets and social responsibilities and, y’know, remembering to eat and sleep, and that’s all well and good, and I’m handling it better than I expected, to be honest. But I don’t think there’s any harm in reflection, so long as it’s done properly. I’m always warned off of worrying over what could have been, or what I might have done, or what if this had happened? But I don’t see any issue with those thoughts if I remain in control of them. I don’t see any problem with learning from who I used to be.
Late at night, I wait for the right moment and then draw from my tarot. I don’t remember the cards come morning, but I remember what they told me: that I had a choice to make. To be passive, demure, grinding my teeth against the consequences of inaction; or to be assertive, forthright, headstrong. Stubborn. I am good at stubbornness. I sit here now and draw from my tarot again: the two of swords. Peace, tranquility, control. I know I am on the right path. ♦