I have a confession to make. I hate, HATE, the way autumn rushes into Ukraine, like a guest who shows up to early – and already filthy drunk. The blue of the sky gets deeper, the wind has a damp undertow. Autumn here smells like mushrooms and earth and every single bad thing I’ve ever wanted to forget. It’s much more civilized in North Carolina, by comparison. Everyone complains about the heat well into September. Most of the clothes you buy during the end-of-summer sales can remain relevant into mid-October. And chestnuts and memories don’t come down to whack you over the head. At the very least, you can go on ignoring autumn for a good while – smiling at it politely, and nodding, and not really giving a damn either way.
At this time, I remind myself that Pushkin loved autumn. And then I think that he loved it because he was fundamentally batshit. Autumn itself is batshit. It gets under your clothes like a pervert on a dark stairwell. It’s beautiful in the way that pure white cocaine powder is beautiful. Autumn is dumpsters and graffiti and dogs getting wet in the rain. It’s inadequate footwear and dead moths.
Seasonal depression much? – You’re thinking right now. Probably. And terrible, terrible recollections dappled with yellow and browns leaves too. Some of it is just that strange alchemy of childhood, the little miseries that have been beheaded in my mind, rendered meaningless but no less ugly. And other, more concrete stuff. Dark rooms, groaning floorboards. That sort of thing.
My cousin has rather testily pointed out that I can easily bugger off to Amman, where I have very few memories, and where it stays hotter longer. But I don’t want the desert. Especially this year, with Ramadan being so early, and people fasting in the heat, and me being such a huge distraction n’ stuff.
I was with a TV crew from New Zealand yesterday (I don’t know if I made an ass out of myself talking about Ukraine, feminism, and boobs – but I probably did), and damn, New Zealand is looking pretty sweet right now. I have got, count ’em, ZERO memories in New Zealand. Oh, and Southern Hemisphere? Hello? It would be pretty ideal, to split the year into two hemispheres, and never let autumn find me. The vast amounts of money required for that are, uh, just a teeny hurdle.
I don’t know what it is about the year 2009 in particular (or maybe I do know), but goddamn. Goddamn! I suppose listening to country music doesn’t help. “Gone, gone with the wind, ain’t nobody comin’ back again,” and all that.
Natalia A. 
Yep, Pushkin was a perv. Not familiar with the term ‘batshit’, what exactly does it mean? 🙂
Shockingly, we still have summer here, in the UK. I even swam in the sea yesterday- first time in 9 years I’ve lived here, believe it or not. Still can’t believe it.
I could never live in New Zealand or Australia. I can’t help it, but the accent irritates the hell out of me. I know those are two completely different accents, but somehow to my Azeri ear they sound very similar. I wonder if my Azeri accent irritates New Zealanders back? Hmm…interesting.
Pushkin wasn’t the only one, you know. Keats quite liked Autumn as well.
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”
Personally I think that he was making the best of a bad business; reminding himself that at least it wasn’t freezing cold yet. Summer is immeasurably better, and I refuse to admit it’s gone as long as I’m still driving without a roof more than half the time.
You know we would love to have you in aid right? We have beaches
Aid = aus stupid auto correctl
I love what passes for Autumn in the Deep South. We wear shorts well into November, have Thanksgiving dinner and still in shirt sleeves, roses from the garden on the table at Christmas…all that. Of course, the summers suck, but it’s a trade-off.
Hmm, I’m not sure what you’d make of New Zealand weather. Depends where you go I suppose. Our winters are long and depressing, and presuming you imagine doing spring-summer in either hemisphere our springs are not a great improvement.
Wellington weather is very strange at present, it has been still for weeks now (that never happens), and right now it is cool and gloriously sunny. This South Islander is happy but it’s beyond odd!
But maybe you could pay a visit some day, see how you like it. 🙂
Every season in Albany is a filthy drunk party-crasher, but winter here is one who blacked out and can’t be woken.