Falling for autumn

EDINBURGH, Scotland – The nights are growing cold. For one such as me who spent an entire lifetime in tropical paradise, the autumn season is coupled with an odd sensation of excitement and melancholy. The interweaving of green, yellow and red of leaves and trees are exquisitely beautiful, but there is a certain solitude in the act of watching colors slowly fade into brown. As a friend, Andrea See, in Shanghai mentioned, "There is more reflection, introspection, quieter moments and steady conversation, even the occasional instance of the blues and a touch of sadness. Fall is the time of year to stop, take a deep, steadying breath, look back, look in, and then look forward. Where am I? How far have I come? And I guess more importantly, am I going the right way?"

The semester break has come and gone, and I spent a cold and wet two weeks in the United Kingdom. As we drifted back into our regular routine in our Aegean school, stories about the holidays were passed back and forth; laughter and tears were exchanged on the various exploits and mishaps we all encountered during the break. Travel journals were read in class – none more touching to me than the piece written by Brianna Privett, a friend and classmate who like me, went up north for the holidays. For those who haven’t experienced the changing of seasons, the passage captures the feel of losing the sun to longer and longer nights.

Polar Night – A Guide to the North for Lost Travelers By Brianna Privett

You arrive in the city without a map. You anticipated a loss of direction but you forgot that the nights are all so long here, in the North. Here you have lost the edges of the day. There is nothing to stay your pace so you set out on the streets and the air is wet and close, and there is no end to the grey of the sky – it has washed the day away, and the streets away, and the lanky sway of the shapes of people in the fog doesn’t disguise the fact that it has washed their faces away. Empty cabs drift by with their beacons lit, but there are no eyes to meet yours and no signal can penetrate, so you keep walking and you think you might have seen the sun, just around the edge of that building there, but there isn’t even a window on the brick there to blame for your gross desire of light.

Here the streets hum and the people move like trees move, and there is a flower shop on every corner spilling blossoms into window puddles of light, and there are strings of colored bulbs in between buildings and they light the torches sometime in the afternoon, but you’re not sure what time it is because you haven’t got a map, and you haven’t got the sun, and you have no faces from which to guess the hour. The sidewalks are papered with a palimpsest of leaf fall and there are slim white birches in the park glowing in a veil of gold and the loveliness of all this color amid the grey begins to hurt you so you find the oldest café in the city, and you walk in soaked with the air and lean for a moment against the sibilant murmur of northern voices warbling in unseen rooms and the espresso is good and you’ve never seen candles glow so beautifully in the afternoon, and you are nearly certain now that you can find somewhere to go, even with no sun to guide you. The grey afternoon presses against the glass of the windows in the café like a hungry cat, and the coffee has turned to copper in your mouth, so you order something a little stronger and you are sitting still in a room warmed with bodies and smoke but you feel as though you’re moving through water, and when the aproned lady asks you to pay you keep searching for a face and the words in your mouth are drowned in copper, and you step back outside. The air is too close and there are shapes in the fog and these streets keep changing on you as soon as you think you can read the signs.

This particular street takes you to the palace in the park, but the king is not at home today and the ponds have all been emptied for the winter and you wonder at the kindness of monarchs who take away the reflecting grey and leave pools of brilliant leaves in its place, and you begin to disbelieve in the sky and suspect that if there was once light this far north, it must have come from the trees. Everywhere there is not grey there is some gold and the startling quiet of gulls walking in state along the park path. You have forgotten you are near the sea. The gulls are misplaced as you are misplaced and you find yourself in the center of the city, under a solitary neon sign twinkling an advert for chocolate, standing still against the cinematic flicker of people moving in the fog, and there is water on your face where the grey condenses and beads against your skin as though you were glass, as though you were a window against which the light of the distant northern sun is reflected without your knowledge. You wonder for a second if a window ever ever sees the sun, until the greyness overtakes you and you have forgotten your face and you slow your step because all streets are the same street and you will keep walking until you find a door that opens into a room where the people flicker like candles and go out, one by one, as the night wears on.

* * *

Thanks for writing! For additional comments or suggestions, e-mail me at stephaniecoyiuto@yahoo.com.