Halloween, Socked Feet, Unplaced Prints

October 31st. I have been standing at the kitchen wall in my socks for four minutes and I have not moved because the prints are doing something in the light and I want to see if I can tell what it is before I name it wrong.

They have been there for over three weeks. I wrote about the not-placing, said it was the answer, the way the named gap was, the way the Portland tab was. I believe that. I still believe it. But there is one sentence in the draft folder that I wrote when the October light first caught the paper's edge, and I haven't published it, and I haven't deleted it, and this morning I understand why: I was waiting to see if the light would change the question. Not change my mind. Change the question. Those are different things.

The sentence is: they look better unplaced than I expected. I wrote it three and a half weeks ago and it is still true, which means it was probably always the post. The October light this morning, and it is a particular quality of light, the kind that arrives in the last week of the month and does not ask your permission, it fell across both prints at an angle I hadn't seen before. Not dramatic. Just: honest. The paper has texture. The marks have edges. The leaning is not a waiting posture; it is just what they are doing.

Prints in October. Still not sure what to do with them.

I made my coffee, I stood in my socks, and I took a photograph of the prints instead of myself looking at them, because the light was on them and not on me. Which is maybe the thing the draft-folder sentence was waiting to tell me. Happy Halloween.

The thing about October light is it asks a slightly different question.