The light has changed;
middle C is tuned darker now.
And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed.
This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring.
The light of autumn: you will not be spared.
- Louise Glück, “October”
I wake in a light that strains the eyes, the back of my mouth bitter, as if someone had forced open my throat in the night and poured in the cordial of my own loss. Loss in the bloodstream, loss like a language: have lost, am always losing, will lose. Solid ground, my keys, my mind.
October always comes as warning. No sirens, no slap at the back of the head. Just something creeping and certain, tarry undercurrent.
*******
I grew up in New England. Don’t tell me I don’t know autumn. I know what she looks like wrapped in her goodnesses: a beauty in her best dress, swirling red rust. Seduction of cinnamon and nutmeg, apple cheeks. Sky so crisp and blue above her, you could take a bite if you were tall enough.
It isn’t that I don’t like her. I like what she brings: a quieting, a resentless frugality after summer’s reckless and necessary joys. It’s here, in the harvest, that I rest. I remember what is good.
We drove north for a few days. I hadn’t been doing well, hollowed out and too quiet, finding it hard to find reasons to do anything at all. Aloud, we hoped the mountains would do something. In secret, I was sure they wouldn’t.
But for three days, autumn showed me her best. I slept to cricket-song and picked orchard apples as I haven’t since I was young. I climbed trails crisscrossed with tree roots and drove roads dripping gold-leafed. I felt an uncurling in me, a hard wax melting, frenetic stuttering mind going still. I stretched into the season like a warm and unmade bed.
The last night, we made a fire in the garden. A fire! A strange world, ours, when such primal element turns rarity. A fine rain-dust fell on us, made the woodpile spit sparks. The flames moved like hands, I wanted to hold them with mine. Instead, my plate empty, tracing the edge of my glass over and over, I proclaimed myself to be happy.
Really? he said, grinning. Who could blame him for incredulity, I hadn’t spoken the word in months.
Really, I said. I’m so happy. Sleeping animal, it nestled in my chest, quiet and content. A joy wrapped up and held, rather than on display. A joy that seemed only to exist in this minute, belly-full, with him and the crickets and the low blaze.
I’m glad, he said, the light dancing in his glasses. We stayed until the flames slept, until the embers hissed, and the creature in my ribs slept on.
I’m not saying it was false hope. I’m not saying I was lying. It was a lifting of the veil, to know that I could still feel that way in a season and a year like a hammer, beating down and splintering.
But the quieting season is also the dying season. Zinnias browning on the bush. Rotting fruit, sweet and wasted, ringing tree trunks like sores. Pumpkins too small to pick, shriveling green-grey on the vine. I saw them and I looked away. I saw them and knew what was coming.
*******
Something I will never forget: the animals.
It was on the drive south. Even with a bag of fresh-picked apples and a gallon of cider in the backseat, I could feel something precious draining from my blood, a truce ending. A weight seemed to grow in my stomach as the miles ticked down to the city.
A sound escaped my throat as I saw the first one, a mangle of fur and crimson on the asphalt. The skies stretched bloodless, unforgiving. They came maybe every twenty feet after that, for too many miles: Chipmunk, squirrel, raccoon, stag, none were spared. I started counting, and then I lost count. A procession of bodies, too full and too strange to ascribe to bad driving. I never saw anything like it in my life. Ancient omen spread across twenty-first century highway. What are they trying to tell us, what is it that’s coming, I thought.
A thought that didn’t occur to me then: Maybe it’s already here.
I know what you will say: it’s fixed. It’s necessary. It will all come back.
In my head, Paul Theroux replies: You never come all the way back.
I come to winter like I come to a fight, armor-plated and terrified. I fight breathless and bloody-knuckled, and it feels like only a shred of luck sees me out of my head and through to spring.
I survive. I heal, for the most part. But I never come all the way back.
I know what you will say: why tremble, why shrink from it, why can’t we have the good things. I never said we couldn’t. (The apples, the mountains, the fire.) But I never said they came without a price, either.
We are closing in on a year that has already been hard-pressed for goodness, sick-ravaged and deadly, authoritarian and violent. And this is all before the short, dark days. So yes, by all means, seek out the sweetnesses. We will need them to hold. We will need them to hold us.
I know what is coming. I am enjoying what I can. I am making my armor. I am not ready, but I will be.
Parting notes—
If You’re Already Dreading Winter, Here Are Some Small Ways to Prepare Now (Vice) — a supremely helpful article for winter-dreaders, listing small but actionable ways to improve your surroundings and day-to-day lifestyle season. I bought winter boots and a lap desk because of this article.
Check your voting options via Headcount if you are eligible in the US. This won’t fix our collective dread, but it’s step one in taking care of one another.
If you’re all set with a voting plan, consider 1) supporting this organization focused on restoring voting rights to formerly incarcerated citizens, and/or 2) finding a mutual aid fund in your area (US) to support your neighbors, because we are still in a pandemic. Let’s help each other.
A few favorite recipes to hunker down with on cold dark days: a 5-ingredient vegetarian chili (can be made with meat!), brown butter banana bread, and fudge brownies.