Friday Open Thread (with Canadian Thanksgiving)

Dear Friends,

This weekend I'm celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving with my family, and all the things I want to write about feel too big, and I am so tired, and my restorative activity lately has been wandering around taking far too many photos of light shining through leaves* while I think about autumn, and movement, and time passing, and loss, and gratitude.

In short, this time of year thou mayst in me behold, and the only question I really have for you is this: suppose the photo below were magic, and that just by wanting it enough you could walk through it towards wherever in the world you wanted to be, without cost, or airports, or borders, and a guaranteed way back as soon as you wanted it. But it only works once, and it only works tonight. Where would you find yourself?

Wishing you a profoundly good weekend full of wonder and grace,

Amal

* a phenomenon I've been informed is called subsurface scattering, thank you Quinn!

Postscripts:

• I particularly enjoyed today's essay from Max Gladstone comparing creative endeavours to chasing a gazelle.
• Sam J. Miller has a collection of short stories coming out in May of next year, and I wrote an introduction to it! It's wonderful, and I highly recommend pre-ordering it.
• Speaking of pre-orders, lightning-rider and egret-tamer C.S.E. Cooney's debut novel Saint Death's Daughter (perhaps known to some of you previously as Miscellaneous Stones) comes out in February 2022! I adore Cooney's everything, but her writing's a most especial delight, she's one of my very dearest friends, and I am extremely excited to read this book in particular, which has had a very, very long road to get to where it is. Here I am cuddling my ARC of it.