Tumbling into fall.: seanan

Tumbling into fall.

Here in California, the blackberry brambles are putting out their last, sweetest berries, the ones that taste like an entire summer crammed into less than a single bite of fruit. The season's scant burden of tomatoes is ripe and colored like a thousand bonfires, coming in from the fields a bushel at a time. The butterflies are migrating down the coast, toward warmer climes; the department stores are dressing themselves in orange and black, like a season of mourning for our departing monarchs. Stray cats sun themselves later into the afternoon, because it takes that much longer for the concrete to warm up.

Summer is ending.

I always feel a little wistful this time of year. Autumn is my favorite season; I love the colors of the world, the constant taste of rain and bonfires in the air, and the seasonal ice cream flavors that inevitably cluster in the supermarkets. I love Halloween. I love the buildup and the teardown and everything else that comes with it. But still, the summer's ending. The rains are coming, the snows are coming, the harvest is coming in. Lily Fair only holds her court for a few months at a time, and then it's Snow White's turn for days on days, and then Rose Red again. We have so little time here, it makes me wistful to know that no matter how much I love it, it never lasts.

The orb weaver spiders are building their webs against the winter. The squirrels are squirreling away everything they can. The crows are singing songs of the cold days to come. And I'm watching my temporary country come around again, and I have my passport, and I'm an autumn girl; it's been too long since I've been home.

the_dark_fyre

September 16 2009, 01:26:37 UTC 7 years ago

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I think there's just something about this time of year that lends itself to wistfulness... There's always a sense of change in the air, and a weird duality as the air doesn't quite chill even after the sun's dipped below the horizon.

Also, I envy the ease that you paint scenes with words. The first paragraph alone was enough to conjure images of Wal-Mart unfurling veils and banners in Hallowe'en colours with all the pomp and circumstance of a state funeral.

seanan_mcguire

September 16 2009, 04:13:13 UTC 7 years ago

I do love seeing the decorations starting to go up. It's like OH YAY HOME IS HERE.

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September 16 2009, 04:14:01 UTC 7 years ago

I love Halloween in Alabama. It's so gorgeous there, and they have the best haunted corn mazes.

talkstowolves

September 16 2009, 02:16:04 UTC 7 years ago

Bless you, you speak my benediction also. Though your world is one of greater contrasts than my Southern clime.

September 16 2009, 04:14:58 UTC 7 years ago

That's because you're the Southern Pumpkin Queen. Love ya!

the_s_guy

September 16 2009, 04:13:30 UTC 7 years ago

"Summer is over and gone," they sang. "Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying."

September 16 2009, 04:15:14 UTC 7 years ago

Precisely.

September 16 2009, 13:48:58 UTC 7 years ago

Autumn seems... relaxing, a little, to me. The swollen busyness of summer has backed off, there's a sense that the day, for now, is drawing to a close, and it's time to hang up the work tools and step out into the cooling hours to dusk. The world is putting down its burden for a moment and taking a breath tinged with the fading strong greenery of summer and the first hints of coming frost, but with a deep, satisfying, earthy, complex, and layered melange of its own.

Myself, I'm a winter guy. The deep, deep, winter, where everything has been scoured down to its bones and the air contains nothing at all but itself and ice. When the world seems to have stopped, timeless, and there's room to think vast, glittering thoughts, fragile and ephemeral as snowflakes, amongst and between the quieted minds.

September 16 2009, 14:05:43 UTC 7 years ago

I get cold too easily to be a very good winter girl. I sit around shivering and being baleful at people until they light things on fire to appease me.

September 17 2009, 01:05:20 UTC 7 years ago

Ah, yes. I'm afraid I have much the opposite problem, or at least used to - I apparently had some kind of built-in nuclear reactor which allowed me to walk around in tees at 3am in the dead of winter with the wind howling down off the snowcaps.

In summer, of course, I retreated to anywhere with aircon and let the thermophiles have their time in the sun.

September 17 2009, 04:29:55 UTC 7 years ago

...wow. GO TEAM SOLAR POWER!

technoshaman

September 16 2009, 14:55:55 UTC 7 years ago

*sigh* Despite being a galvanized resident of the Emerald Forest, this year I shall miss Summer; long hours of light and dry roads on which to ride... ah, well. Soon I shall have Pants, ones that don't get wet when rained upon, nor shred when (Lady forbid) sliding along the pavement, and then I can ride with impunity... although I think perhaps riding to Consonance might be just a bit much, what with the Siskyous and all.. but BayCon? oooh. That... could be fun.

May your harvest be glorious.

vixyish

September 16 2009, 16:13:18 UTC 7 years ago Edited: September 16 2009, 18:07:56 UTC

I'm always wistful this time of year too-- because I'm a summer girl, and my time is going away. But the watercolor trees never let me be sad for long; I can never resist stopping in the middle of a sentence (mine or someone else's) to go "OOOOooOOoOOoooohhhh, look at that *TREE*!"

Because we don't just get red and yellow and orange around here, we get wine-grape maroon and *PURPLE*. Sometimes all on one tree. Sometimes all on one *leaf*. The colors here are always glorious, and I'm sad any time I'm someplace where autumn doesn't have purple. I gotta have the purple!

...that reminds me, I was going to upload an autumn icon.

(Edit: ah yes. Like that.)

I like knowing about Lily Fair. It makes it easier.

September 16 2009, 19:39:28 UTC 7 years ago

Those leaves look totally fake. Whoa.

I love my lady Lily. We've been missing her too long.

September 16 2009, 19:49:08 UTC 7 years ago

They're real! I went searching through Flickr photos. La la la.

September 17 2009, 04:30:15 UTC 7 years ago

I believe you, I'm just going "oooooooo, wow."

scholarinexile

September 16 2009, 18:47:02 UTC 7 years ago

::hugs:: You just summed up how I've been feeling here in PA for the last week, as the Halloween stores have opened, the groceries, have begun displaying pumpkins, and the nights have cooled. I too am an autumn person at heart (except in the bad Changeling sense), and am glad for the return of the time of leaves and corn and shadows, but I always shed a little tear for summer as it goes away, especially when it was as cool as this last one.

September 16 2009, 19:40:02 UTC 7 years ago

There is nothing bad to the autumn. I'm glad you're here with us.

September 16 2009, 20:52:24 UTC 7 years ago

I alluded here to the Autumn People from the old Changeling: The Dreaming setting for White Wolf. The harbingers of banality who crushed the dreams out of the souls of humans and fae alike.

September 16 2009, 20:53:49 UTC 7 years ago

Oh, I know. I hmmmph in their general direction. Silly non-liminal people.

September 16 2009, 20:56:55 UTC 7 years ago

Agreed. Are you familiar with the new incarnation, Changeling: The Lost? If anything, it's even more hauntingly beautiful than the Dreaming, and I can't wait till I have time in my campaign docket to run it (as I'm currently running four other games that rotate weekly).