November in my soul.

November is a particularly nostalgic time for me when it comes to the online world and computers.

I hadn't really used computers much until 1997, when my roommate got her first computer. She introduced me to AOL (ha!) and chat rooms and surfing the web, way back then.

I remember it was November at the time I became consumed with this new hobby; I have some distinct emotional memories of conversations spent in chat that went well into the darkest hours of the night. I remember the cold, rainy gloom of late Autumn just outside my window. Grey skies; dead brown leaves; cold, damp drizzle. I remember a conversation about a dark room lit with only a single blue lightbulb, and white sheer curtains billowing in the breeze. Fragments of memory, but so vivid.

So anyway. About this time every year, once Halloween has passed, I tend to get a little nostalgic for that time of discovery. Just this evening I was looking through some of my old archives, and though I didn't quite find what I was looking for, I did find a random snippet of something I wrote long ago -- a very old Artist's Statement for a simple webpage I had created to showcase a number of my old sketchbook drawings:

-- There came a moment in my life when I realized, 'If I were not an artist, I'd have been a murderer.' My art allows me to channel my emotions into a metaphorical violent act. The subjects of my drawings become my victims, yet are also self-portraits. (Self-infliction?) A catharsis of hue and blood, this collection is only a small sampling of my work. Not for the fragile-minded or for those who cannot tolerate the idea of pain. --

I checked the file properties, and it was dated September 3, 2000; the actual date I wrote it is probably older than that. I can barely remember writing it at all.

Even older is this picture I had drawn in Microsoft Paint -- my first digital art EVER, done in 1998:

And another, from right around the same time:

I used to get a bit sad the day after Halloween -- I dreaded the approach of the Xmas season, the cold, the seasonal depression that grips me almost every winter. I still do, of course, but now, I also get pangs of melancholy nostalgia this time of year.

In November... at night, part of me is eternally wandering through the raw, misty gloom... wandering alone in the darkness, bundled up in sweaters and scarves, trudging through puddles and scattered piles of decomposing leaves. November in my soul.