For years, autumn has been my favorite season. While walking on campus today, I looked up from the damp, worm-ridden sidewalk to see two rows of golden trees, their leaves flopping - not fluttering - to the ground, soaked with the rain from the night before. It was absolutely beautiful, and in keeping with recent tradition, I wanted to know what made it so.
So I explored.
I grabbed the first piece of paper I could find (the Business Day section of today's New York Times, as pictured above) and started scrawling down any thoughts and feelings that came into my head. After a few minutes of writing, I found that it was the evanescent feeling that I enjoyed so particularly. Everything feels as though it's slowly falling apart. I love the feeling of disshevelment that pervades the outdoors. The trees are in a state of decollatage - not quite undressed for the winter, but still not quite fully clothed. Discarded leaves are strewn on the grass and sidewalk. There's no sense in cleaning them up; tomorrow, a fresh blanket of red and gold will be laid on the ground. Prints of fallen leaves graffiti the sidewalk. Footprints and tire tracks do the same to the manicured lawns. Even the sky looks untidy, as though a five year-old in the heavens were fingerpainting in gray.
People look untidy, too. The falling rain makes one want to bundle up, but not in anything pretty. Who wants to have their beautiful winter coat soaked and ruined in the rain and mud? Instead, everyone wears a nondescript hoodie, content to be warm, dry, and blend in. Beautiful, trim fashion is sacrificed for function. The drizzle of rain has its way with perfectly parted and set hair, giving everyone an equally frumpy appearance. Hair dissheveled, clothes baggy, faces wet, we all look exactly the same. Winter is on its way, planning to restore order with snowfall. Sidewalks will be delineated from lawns with straight, white edges. Everything will be a perfectly orderly white.
Me, I'm going to revel in transience while I can.
7 comments:
I love this time of year. One of my favorite memories of campus is of a day in the fall after a night of rain, when the ground was littered with red brown bean pods and pink and green yellow leaves. It looked like the morning after a party.
Thanks for the reminder.
pretty. i sometimes wish it would be autumn here. it's trying hard, but a smattering of rain didn't do much for the eternal summer that holds this valley of the sun by the throat.
That was a lovely, literary post. Thanks.
I was just looking at the finger-painted sky yesterday. It was quite beautiful.
Beautiful words. I love the gold leaves on the trees around campus, magnificent!
I don't know, I think a good umbrella and a nice, water-resistant jacket...with good earrings... are pretty hot...:P
wow. I think this may be my favourite post so far. It almost makes me look forward to fall this year. To hear someone put exactly into words what I feel about fall but never have had the way to express it is pretty damn nifty. That and its quarter to five in the morning, gah.
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