I spent twenty years in New England. Autumn in Southern California is not the same. Leaves barely change. The bougainvillea flower. Here, summer temperatures don’t arrive until mid- or late-July, then linger into November. I drove to Griffith Park one afternoon last week to go running and wore a T-shirt and shorts. The mountains alternated between budding green and brown. Afterward, I rested in a grove of eucalyptus trees elevated above the east side of the park. The surrounding landscape was full of light that’s thinner than in summer, perhaps a little cooler, but it could’ve been a day from August just the same.
In New England, fall is fall. Sticks and mud, new backpacks, shedding leaves. The arrow points to winter. In Los Angeles, days are tentative. The compass lacks a magnet. Fire season isn’t done, the rains haven’t arrived, and that grove of eucalyptus would burn in a snap if a blaze came through. Time feels drifty even without a pandemic, a presidential election. I actually enjoy the season for being of two minds. The feeling is like when you stand in bright sunlight and crave a jacket: confusing but not unpleasant, if you enjoy living in the moment and out of it at the same time. We know change is coming, we’re just not sure when.
Осенняя песнь, Victor Borisov-Musatov (1905)
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