I was ready for autumn when summer began. Well, I sort of enjoyed summer when it started. But within only a few days I caught the first subtle hint of autumn. It was the merest whisper you’d miss in a moment. It was so transient. There was something in the atmosphere one evening. A kind of scent and cool moisture. And that was it for me. I was ready for autumn. The thinking man’s season. The thinking woman’s season. The thinking dog’s season. The thinking magpie’s season. The thinking all lifeforms’ season. It is a reflective season because we know it’s gonna get cold soon and thoughts of survival and whether life itself is even worth surviving enter our minds. That is why autumn is brilliant and has more depth. It causes us to consider what the point of everything is. Our actions have to have purpose.
I don’t know what autumn looks like in your neck of the woods but I live in Britain and it’s perfect for autumn. It’s a temperate climate and we’ve got deciduous woodlands and suburban parks. We’ve also got back gardens. Everyone has a go at wasps but when they quietly scurry around the grass in autumn in the chilly afternoon they look as lovely as any other creature. Checking out little twigs that have fallen from ash trees where woodpigeons have plumped themselves up to survive the coming winter. If they hover around a fallen apple that’s a bonus. Or an old tennis ball. Perhaps a childrens’ slide or swing. Wasps loitering around these things when people aren’t really making use of the garden anymore are good eggs. If you’ve got it in for wasps - grow up now - they’re good kids. Just let them live and die and do what they want to do.
If anyone is gonna make you pause, consider the Daddy Long Legs. The biggest morons in our country. Idiots who tumbleweed their bodies out of school football fields as your shoes scuff through wet grass. They’re like the world’s worst squadron of aircraft scrambling to get in the sky. And then they actively crash into anything they can find. Utter bozos. When they try to escape on the ground it’s like they swing their legs over their shoulders and try to run but wonder why they’re on their arses. Anyway. They’re alright. Conkers are obviously good and have the best colours and richest gloss on earth. Nice to hold. Acorns are good to hold too but better to throw. Leaves are obviously the pin-ups of autumn. But don’t give me your shitty flame coloured vistas of Vermont. Give me leaves in a miserable tennis court. Give me leaves by some Victorian railings. Or in the guttering of a roof. Places where they’ve just huddled to die. Actually that’s a bit much. I’m not a teenage Goth. I was reacting to my own words and not my own feelings when I wrote that. Long story short: leaves are good.
Autumn is seen as the transitional season between summer and winter. It’s viewed as a transition rather than a destination in it’s own right. (Spring gets the same deal but we’re not here to talk about spring). Autumn is fixed in our minds as an intermediary season. This happens because things are changing so visibly. But everything’s always changing. Every calendar day things are changing. There’s no reason why we couldn’t flip our perception of the seasonal changes brought about by earth’s tilted axis and see summer as the transition to autumn. Why does the best season have to be relegated into a corridor to somewhere else? I would much rather spend an eternity in a British autumn than in any summer. Let summer be the rickshaw taking us some place else. It’s garish and vulgar anyway. (Actually I like summer too. But we’ll discuss that next year).
Anyway. One last thing before the man arrives with my doner kebab. My revery about autumn is taking place whilst waiting for a kebab. I haven’t finished with wasps. (I want you to love wasps even though they’re obviously dickheads. I know this. Despite what I said earlier I’m not stupid. They’re skinheads in nu-rave outfits and they look at every human being like they just spilled their pint). But none the less, I read somewhere the other day that ants evolved from wasps. ANTS CAME FROM WASPS. That’s pretty special. You got to admit it’s not a shit world. Begrudgingly of course. But it’s pretty decent. As autumn kicks in this year and everything around you seems to be dying in advance of winter, awesome shit is happening in the grand scheme of things. You gotta stick around to see as much of it as you can.