by
Lupo Secco
Oh, the leaves are brown. And the sky is grey. To everything — turn, turn, turn. A concatenation of lyrics.
Seasons change, inevitably. Around here many people talk of autumn as their favourite season and it’s a lot to do with colour. As the leaves begin to flame orange, the landscape here bursts into vivid hues. Hardcastle Crags, a four-hundred-acre National Trust Park nearby, becomes a visual riot, an explosion of natural chromatics, a firework display. Hughes and Plath wrote of it; Plath is buried in Heptonstall, Hughes born in Royd.
And when it comes to autumn, there is no one better than Keats. While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue. It is a season of harvest and glow. Of gathering and listening to full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn. Of preparation for the privations of winter.
In the Robin, the first fire was lit at the cusp of the August-September axis, and the customers congregate before it, in supplication. Huddling together, fire as heart of the community once more, careening down the cruxes to Christmas — plans are already in place for the Christmas menu in the restaurant and there are parties to plot. I imagine regular readers will infer a pretty clear view where I stand on Christmas. I’m no Mariah Carey, put it that way. I struggle with a single ho, let alone three. I won’t be decorating my house, not now I live alone. Decorations are for an audience, not an absence.
And then there is Seasonal Affective Disorder, the causes of which are related to depletion of light and circadian rhythms. In a valley like this, which looks very much as if God has wielded an axe and hewed a slice into the land, as though felling a mighty oak, the hills rise sharply, and the sun disappears exponentially as we reach the turning of the clocks. By the winter equinox, you’re looking at about eight hours of daylight, night waterfalling before most people have left work. Despite my Saturnine looks, I am not a creature of the night, although there are others who would no doubt disagree, barfly that I am. SAD’s symptoms include low energy, irritability, changes in sleep patterns, difficulty concentrating, and feelings of hopelessness. It’s a barrel of laughs.
I’m sure I shouldn’t think this way. Autumn here is beautiful, a burning, raucous red and orange everywhere you look, a Turner painting made real, the haziness he induced in his work as his eyesight failed echoing what I see here, a blurred firelit melodrama across the eyeline, rain and wind sweeping across you, but always with this air of the last days of abundance. Yet it is also an augury, a departure and dying of the light, that warmth — that vitamin D, for goodness’ sake. More people die in the winter than at any other time and autumn is the unstoppable train to that destination, a clanging death knell, for all its last delirious dance. I frolic in the sun, but I fall in The Fall.
Sadness descends on me like a long black cloud coming down. Grief gushes and looking to a future shared seems fruitless. My hope begins to extinguish like a guttering wick.
People close to me, whose opinions I value and even treasure, find me staring into the middle distance and ask for a penny for my thoughts. My thoughts at this time aren’t worth a penny. They cram my head, jostle with each other unbidden, crawling over my brain like bees in a hive. Recently, I’ve heard the term headspace used a lot. I don’t have headspace. My head is like a hostel for the boated immigrants, starting a journey to redemption, when it likely doesn’t exist. Aiming for the Gates of Heaven, when they only open onto Purgatory and a listless Limbo.
‘Sad’ has somehow lost its meaning. It’s now often used to describe something as a bit unfashionable, as has occurred with ‘tragic,’ just an insult. But sadness is a state, a torpor, that starts to fall on me with the leaves. Sometimes, I see beauty stand before me, but it backs away, breaking what’s left of me into pieces, cracked mosaics on the floor.
Perhaps I need another epiphany. A moment when the light breaks through the clouds and lifts the funereal veil from my eyes. In the interim, I’ll just fight against it.
I’ve known ‘sad’ before. It came in human form, and I should have seen it coming, its three letters inked on to me like an unwanted tattoo.
But the seasons turn and all is washed away. I’ll go back to Keats and his season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and watch the fire crackle before me.
