I suppose being reflective may have made me seem pessimistic to some, but I hope I continue to relish life and its many joys as I always have, Ron.

As was mentioned in another post, Jude the Obscure was written in the winter of Thomas Hardy’s life as a novelist. I know that when I saw a film version of it on public television when I was a teenager, during the spring of my life, I was moved by it but moved from the place I stood, where winter was in the remote distance. When I actually read the novel in the summer of my life, it moved me in a different way.

We’re not to winter yet. It’s still fall in our lives but winter is not so far away anymore. Reading your excerpts from Jude the Obscure gives me a chill that I couldn’t have felt when I was in my early thirties.

Still I remember that Thomas Hardy wrote of light in winter, too, in Jude the Obscure.

I can picture him writing Jude the Obscure on cloudy days like these we experience in November in the Pacific Northwest. I can picture him looking up from his writing to see the clouds part, getting up from his chair to take a winter walk in the sunlight. And not long after that he began to write only poetry.