Autumn Arrives Quotes

Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first September was crisp and golden as an apple.

Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this.

Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me and meditate on how useless effort is, how alien the will, and on how our very meditation is no more useful than effort, and no more our own than the will. Meditate too on how a life that wants nothing can have no weight in the flux of things, but a life the wants everything can likewise have no weight in the flux of things, since it cannot obtain everything, and to obtain less than everything is not worthy of souls that seek the truth.

How can I hope for the news of your arrival from these scattered autumn leaves? Isn't it enough for the sun of my fragile heart to set at this moment?

Here's what I think: it's one thing to know that rejection is coming, and it's an entirely different thing when it arrives.

Autumn has arrived. I hear it in the whispering of leaves.

Autumn arrived and life was in danger of becoming boring again.

Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

Want your boat, Georgie?' Pennywise asked. 'I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager.' He held it up, smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore. Yes, sure,' George said, looking into the stormdrain. And a balloon? I’ve got red and green and yellow and blue...' Do they float?' Float?' The clown’s grin widened. 'Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And there’s cotton candy...' George reached. The clown seized his arm. And George saw the clown’s face change. What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke. They float,' the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held George’s arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or bolted out onto their porches. They float,' it growled, 'they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too–' George's shoulder socked against the cement of the curb and Dave Gardener, who had stayed home from his job at The Shoeboat that day because of the flood, saw only a small boy in a yellow rain-slicker, a small boy who was screaming and writhing in the gutter with muddy water surfing over his face and making his screams sound bubbly. Everything down here floats,' that chuckling, rotten voice whispered, and suddenly there was a ripping noise and a flaring sheet of agony, and George Denbrough knew no more. Dave Gardener was the first to get there, and although he arrived only forty-five seconds after the first scream, George Denbrough was already dead. Gardener grabbed him by the back of the slicker, pulled him into the street...and began to scream himself as George's body turned over in his hands. The left side of George’s slicker was now bright red. Blood flowed into the stormdrain from the tattered hole where his left arm had been. A knob of bone, horribly bright, peeked through the torn cloth. The boy’s eyes stared up into the white sky, and as Dave staggered away toward the others already running pell-mell down the street, they began to fill with rain.

And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom-- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind.

October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was kept busy by a sudden spate of colds among the staff and students. Raindrops the size of bullets thundered on the castle windows for days on end; the lake rose, the flower beds turned into muddy streams, and Hagrid’s pumpkins swelled to the size of garden sheds.

The Ache That Would Not Leave Behind the hum and routine of daily living, there lay a persistent and wild longing for something she could not easily put into words. It felt like impulsive adventures and watching the sun rise over unfamiliar mountains, or coffee in a street café, set to the background music of a foreign language. It was the smell of the ocean, with dizzying seagulls whirling in a cobalt sky; exotic foods and strange faces, in a city where no one knew her name. She wanted secrets whispered at midnight, and road trips without a map, but most of all, she ached for someone who desired to explore the mysteries that lay sleeping within her. The truly heartbreaking part was that she could feel the remaining days of her life falling away, like leaves from an autumn tree, but still this mysterious person who held the key to unlock her secrets did not arrive; they were missing, and she knew not where to find them.

I love the arrival of a new season — each one bringing with it its own emotion: spring is full of hope; summer is freedom; autumn is a colourful release, and winter brings an enchanting peace. It's hard to pick which one I enjoy the most — each time the new one arrives, I remember its beauty and forget the previous one whose qualities have started to dim.

He presented it with a length of string and passed on to the statue of Corrupted Endeavor to await the arrival of Autumn.

At the edge of heaven, tatters of autumn Cloud. After ten thousand miles of clear Lovely morning, the west wind arrives. Here, Long rains haven't slowed farmers. Frontier Willows air thin kingfisher colors, and Red fruit flecks mountain pears. As a flute's Mongol song drifts from a tower, one Goose climbs clear through vacant skies.

The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her; the autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, for her little girl was strong and happy, growing in size and knowledge every day.

The things of your life arrived in their own time, like a train you had to catch. Sometimes this was easy, all you had to do was step onto it, the train was plush and comfortable and full of people smiling at you in a hush, and a conductor who punched your ticket and tousled your head with his big hand, saying, Ain’t you pretty, ain’t you the prettiest girl now, lucky lady taking a big train trip with your daddy, while you sank into the dreamy softness of your seat and sipped ginger ale from a can and watched the world float in magical silence past your window, the tall buildings of the city in the crisp autumn light and then the backs of the houses with laundry flapping and a crossing with gates where a boy was waving from his bicycle, and then the woods and fields and a single cow eating grass....... .....Because sometimes it was one way, easy, and sometimes it was the other, not easy; the things of your life roared down to you and it was all you could do to grab hold and hang on. Your old life ended, and the train took you away to another...

There comes a day each September when you wake up and know the summer is over and fall has arrived. The slant of the sun looks different and something is in the air--a coolness, a hint of frosty mornings to follow. I woke early on the morning of September 24 and reached for a warmer petticoat.

The cat came first, in order to be absolute first. It arrived when all the cribs and closets and cellar bins and attic hang-spaces still needed October wings, autumn breathings, and fiery eyes.

She could see winter making itself comfortable across the town. She liked the silence of this time of year, but had never appreciated its smugness. When the snow arrives autumn has already done all the work, taking care of all the leaves and carefully sweeping summer away from people’s memories. All winter had to do was roll in with a bit of freezing weather and take all the credit, like a man who’s spent twenty minutes next to a barbecue but has never served a full meal in his life.

Sometimes, a day comes along that seems possessed by a certain shade of magic. You know those moments. There is a peculiar pattern to the silhouettes of leaves quivering against the sunbeam on the floor. The dust in the air glows white, charmed. Your voice is a note suspended in the breeze. The sounds outside your window seem very far away, songs of another world, and you imagine that this is the moment just before something unusual happens. Perhaps it is happening right now. My day of magic arrived on a bright autumn morning, when the poplar trees swayed against a golden city.

Night has fallen, and morning will come too,” Kenji said while gazing at the paddy field. “Spring will arrive, and Autumn too. Everything is split in halves. The grass grows, trees wither, animals are born, and they die……when you live with the land, you slowly come to understand that nature is made up of halves. When something bad happens……when a storm or erosion happens, we feel like bad things will only continue. But in truth, the good and the bad, they are all part of nature……part of living. That’s how everyone in the village thinks.” “I do not understand,” Akutagawa said, looking at the same scenery. “So fortune and misfortune are equal halves? Do you want to say the same thing to my comrades who died in the slums?” “That is why you’re the half that’s left, Akutagawa-san.” Kenji looked at Akutagawa. “You survived. And with a very powerful Ability, too. Everybody passed on their good halves to you, I’m sure.

Autumn had arrived— the last blossom whispered, let me stay awhile.

These were both nothing more than a pair of minor incidents that happened in my trivial little life. Short side trips along the way. Even if they hadn’t happened, I doubt my life would have wound up much different from what it is now. But still, these memories return to me sometimes, traveling down a very long passageway to arrive. And when they do, their unexpected power shakes me to the core. Like an autumn wind that gusts at night, swirling fallen leaves in a forest, flattening the pampas grass in fields, and pounding hard on the doors to people’s homes, over and over again.

Then that night there was an early frost, and by Sunday morning, autumn had truly arrived. The sky was a rich cloudless blue, the air still and dry, the maple trees glowing with glorious reds and oranges and yellows, and everywhere on Gardam Street squirrels bustled about with self-importance, burying their nuts in the most unlikely places.

Autumns reward western Kansas for the evils that the remaining seasons impose: winter's rough Colorado winds and hip-high, sheep-slaughtering snows; the slushes and the strange land fogs of spring; and summer, when even crows seek the puny shade, and the tawny infinitude of wheatstalks bristle, blaze. At last, after September, another weather arrives, an Indian summer that occasionally endures until Christmas.

August 1 The harvest season has finally arrived. Today marks its opening. Our next stop on the wheel of the year will be the autumn equinox. I've always seen the opening of the harvest as a kind of stairway we walk down to reach the dark and magickal part of the year where all the good things await. The cool, comforting energy that feels more like home than any place can. Today is the landing at the top of the stairs. All we have to do is put one foot before the other, and before you know it, we'll be watching The Great Pumpkin again.

Early in March the crocuses crept alight, then blazed yellow and purple in the park. In fact it is about five o'clock in the evening that the first hour of spring strikes - autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day. The air, about to darken, quickens and is run through with mysterious white light; the curtain of darkness is suspended, as though for some unprecedented event. There is perhaps no sunset, the trees are not yet budding - but the senses receive an intimation, an intimation so fine, yet striking in so directly, that this appears a movement in one's own spirit. This exalts whatever feeling is in the heart.

At the end of that week, Navin arrived to marry me. I was repulsed by the sight of him, not because I had betrayed him but because he still breathed, because he was there for me and had countless more days to live. And yet without his even realizing it, firmly but without force, Navin pulled me away from you, as the final gust of autumn wind pulls the last leaves from the trees. We were married, we were blessed, my hand was placed on top of his, and the ends of our clothing were knotted together. I felt the weight of each ritual, felt the ground once more underfoot.

... free spirit arrives on earth equipped with the skill and the vision capable of blasting the tragic stuff that happens to us all into space, where it dissolves away to nothing whenever you pay any attention to the lifeforce in her pictures.

Come to my funeral dressed as you would for an autumn walk in the woods. Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission to be late, even without good cause. If my day arrives when you had other plans, please proceed with them instead. Celebrate me there--keep dancing.

The days blur together in Beartown this year; perhaps we can’t bear to keep track of either time or our feelings. At some point the autumn comes to an end and winter arrives, but we barely notice. Time merely passes, most of us are preoccupied just trying to get out of bed each morning.

Ripened Fruit Do you remember how you came into existence? You may not remember because you arrived a little drunk. Let me give you a hint: Let go off your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen! It is difficult to speak to your unripeness. You may still be in your springtime, unaware that autumn exists. This world is a tree to which we cling---- we, the half-ripe fruit upon it. The immature fruit clings tightly to the branch because, not yet ripe, it's unfit for the palace. When fruits become ripe, sweet, and juicy, then, biting their lips, they loosen their hold. When the mouth has been sweetened by felicity, the kingdom of the world loses it's appeal. To be tightly attached to the world is immaturity. As long as you're an embryo, all you think about is sipping blood. There's more to be said, but let the Holy Spirit tell it. You may even tell it to your own ear. Neither I, nor some other "I," needs to tell you, you who are also I. Just as when you fall asleep, you leave the presence of yourself to enter another presence of yourself. You hear something from yourself and imagine that someone else has secretly spoken to you in a dream. But you are not a single "you," my friend----you are the wide sky and the deep sea. Your awesome "You," which is nine hundredfold, is where a hundred of your you's will drown.

Well, that’s one reading of it, Elisabeth says. My own preferred reading is: free spirit arrives on earth equipped with the skill and the vision capable of blasting the tragic stuff that happens to us all into space, where it dissolves away to nothing whenever you pay any attention to the lifeforce in her pictures.

Who is it? Who walks under the trees of the quay? Who is quite lost? Who is past saving? Over whose grave does the grass grow? Dreams have arrived, upstream they came. They came, they climb up the walls of the quay on a ladder. One stops makes conversation with them, they know a number of things, but what they don’t know is where they come from. It is quite warm this autumn evening. They turn toward the river and raise their arms. Why do you raise your amrs instead of clasping us in them?

They fall silently the steps of her arrival - crossing snow so pale  even the morning sky would fall  into nights amber (if it knew of her ways & worth);  for she has entered the palace of gold  - her hair braided with hope tainted with autumn leaves that seem like a hanged man's rope - for her name is war and  her crown is crafted out of grief.

Ever since that day when autumn arrives and the wind sighs around you. If you feel a little sad, it's just the sobbing of the girl that's cracked.

Every arrival,' " quotes Vorstenbosch, " 'is a particular death.

While the blooms were singing the success songs of Summer ; quietly 'October' arrived. (Haiku)

Depression never arrives alone. Depression brings its friends—Despair, Self-Injury, and Suicide.

We should wait six-seven months. Maybe, upon spring's arrival, our love would blossom. As of now, dry-lifeless-forlorn, it resembles the fall foliage. Beautiful, nonetheless! #BeyondAutumn

In the autumn of 1946 the leaves were falling in Germany for the third time since Churchill’s famous speech about the falling of leaves. It was a gloomy season with rain, cold – and hunger, especially in the Ruhr and generally throughout the rest of the old Third Reich. All autumn, trains arrived in the Western Zones with refugees from the Eastern Zone. Ragged, starving and unwelcome, they crowded in dark, stinking station-bunkers or in the giant windowless bunkers that look like rectangular gasometers, looming like huge monuments to defeat in Germany’s collapsed cities. The silence and passive submission of these apparently insignificant people gave a sense of dark bitterness to that German autumn. They became significant just because they came and never stopped coming and because they came in such numbers. They became significant perhaps not in spite of their silence but because of it, for nothing can be expressed with such a charge of menace as that which is not expressed.

Eager to hear more about the aforementioned behaviors of the ill-bred Miss Bowman, Livia leaned back against the edge of the desk, facing Marcus. “I wonder what Miss Bowman did to offend you so?” she mused aloud. “Do tell, Marcus. If not, my imagination will surely conjure up something far more scandalous than poor Miss Bowman is capable of.” “Poor Miss Bowman?” Marcus snorted. “Don’t ask, Livia. I’m not at liberty to discuss it.” Like most men, Marcus didn’t seem to understand that nothing torched the flames of a woman’s curiosity more violently than a subject that one was not at liberty to discuss. “Out with it, Marcus,” she commanded. “Or I shall make you suffer in unspeakable ways.” One of his brows lifted in a sardonic arch. “Since the Bowmans have already arrived, that threat is redundant.

Fire, fire! The branches crackle and the night wind of late autumn blows the flame of the bonfire back and forth. The compound is dark; I am alone at the bonfire, and I can bring it still some more carpenters' shavings. The compound here is a privileged one, so privileged that it is almost as if I were out in freedom -- this is an island of paradise; this is the Marfino "sharashka" -- a scientific institute staffed with prisoners -- in its most privileged period. No one is overseeing me, calling me to a cell, chasing me away from the bonfire, and even then it is chilly in the penetrating wind. But she -- who has already been standing in the wind for hours, her arms straight down, her head drooping, weeping, then growing numb and still. And then again she begs piteously "Citizen Chief! Please forgive me! I won't do it again." The wind carries her moan to me, just as if she were moaning next to my ear. The citizen chief at the gatehouse fires up his stove and does not answer. This was the gatehouse of the camp next door to us, from which workers came into our compound to lay water pipes and to repair the old ramshackle seminary building. Across from me, beyond the artfully intertwined, many-stranded barbed-wire barricade and two steps away from the gatehouse, beneath a bright lantern, stood the punished girl, head hanging, the wind tugging at her grey work skirt, her feet growing numb from the cold, a thin scarf over her head. It had been warm during the day, when they had been digging a ditch on our territory. And another girl, slipping down into a ravine, had crawled her way to the Vladykino Highway and escaped. The guard had bungled. And Moscow city buses ran right along the highway. When they caught on, it was too late to catch her. They raised the alarm. A mean, dark major arrived and shouted that if they failed to catch the girl, the entire camp would be deprived of visits and parcels for whole month, because of her escape. And the women brigadiers went into a rage, and they were all shouting, one of them in particular, who kept viciously rolling her eyes: "Oh, I hope they catch her, the bitch! I hope they take scissors and -- clip, clip, clip -- take off all her hair in front of the line-up!" But the girl who was now standing outside the gatehouse in the cold had sighed and said instead: "At least she can have a good time out in freedom for all of us!" The jailer had overheard what she said, and now she was being punished; everyone else had been taken off to the camp, but she had been set outside there to stand "at attention" in front of the gatehouse. This had been at 6 PM, and it was now 11 PM. She tried to shift from one foot to another, but the guard stuck out his head and shouted: "Stand at attention, whore, or else it will be worse for you!" And now she was not moving, only weeping: "Forgive me, Citizen Chief! Let me into the camp, I won't do it any more!" But even in the camp no one was about to say to her: "All right, idiot! Come on it!" The reason they were keeping her out there so long was that the next day was Sunday, and she would not be needed for work. Such a straw-blond, naive, uneducated slip of a girl! She had been imprisoned for some spool of thread. What a dangerous thought you expressed there, little sister! They want to teach you a lesson for the rest of your life! Fire, fire! We fought the war -- and we looked into the bonfires to see what kind of victory it would be. The wind wafted a glowing husk from the bonfire. To that flame and to you, girl, I promise: the whole wide world will read about you.

THOSE BORN UNDER Pacific Northwest skies are like daffodils: they can achieve beauty only after a long, cold sulk in the rain. Henry, our mother, and I were Pacific Northwest babies. At the first patter of raindrops on the roof, a comfortable melancholy settled over the house. The three of us spent dark, wet days wrapped in old quilts, sitting and sighing at the watery sky. Viviane, with her acute gift for smell, could close her eyes and know the season just by the smell of the rain. Summer rain smelled like newly clipped grass, like mouths stained red with berry juice — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. It smelled like late nights spent pointing constellations out from their starry guises, freshly washed laundry drying outside on the line, like barbecues and stolen kisses in a 1932 Ford Coupe. The first of the many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man’s hands after hours spent in a woodshop. Fall rain was not Viviane’s favorite. Rain in the winter smelled simply like ice, the cold air burning the tips of ears, cheeks, and eyelashes. Winter rain was for hiding in quilts and blankets, for tying woolen scarves around noses and mouths — the moisture of rasping breaths stinging chapped lips. The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children. Viviane was convinced it was due to the way the rain smelled: like the earth, tulip bulbs, and dahlia roots. It smelled like the mud along a riverbed, like if she opened her mouth wide enough, she could taste the minerals in the air. Viviane could feel the heat of the rain against her fingers when she pressed her hand to the ground after a storm. But in 1959, the year Henry and I turned fifteen, those warm spring rains never arrived. March came and went without a single drop falling from the sky. The air that month smelled dry and flat. Viviane would wake up in the morning unsure of where she was or what she should be doing. Did the wash need to be hung on the line? Was there firewood to be brought in from the woodshed and stacked on the back porch? Even nature seemed confused. When the rains didn’t appear, the daffodil bulbs dried to dust in their beds of mulch and soil. The trees remained leafless, and the squirrels, without acorns to feed on and with nests to build, ran in confused circles below the bare limbs. The only person who seemed unfazed by the disappearance of the rain was my grandmother. Emilienne was not a Pacific Northwest baby nor a daffodil. Emilienne was more like a petunia. She needed the water but could do without the puddles and wet feet. She didn’t have any desire to ponder the gray skies. She found all the rain to be a bit of an inconvenience, to be honest.

ARRIVAL And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom— feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind...!

In early autumn the farm recruiters arrived to sign up new workers, and the War Relocation Authority allowed many of the young men and women to go out and help harvest the crops. Some came back wearing the same shoes they'd left in and swore they would never go out there again. They said they'd been shot at. Spat on. Refused entrance to the local diner. The movie theater. The dry goods store. They said the signs in the windows were the same wherever they went: 'No Japs Allowed.' Life was easier, they said, on this side of the fence.

Last year in the region where we live part of the year there were violent windstorms, whole forests were leveled, two- and three-hundred-year-old trees torn up by the roots and tossed aside, houses sliced almost in half by the once-sheltering giants flung down through their roofs. Yesterday another storm, powerful but less so, took down no trees. The ground, though, is littered with leaves, as though autumn had arrived, but the leaves are still green, still alive, many torn away in clumps, with the twigs still intact that attached them to their branches. There’s something disconsolate about them—the desiccated leaves of autumn always appear to have found the place to which they’ve been destined, but these don’t seem to grasp what’s happened to them: they lie on the ground at awkward angles, like things wounded that haven’t completely given in to death and don’t know yet they must.

Hurricane Katrina arrived without a confirmed weather category, or a name that adequately addressed anger summoned from a thousand leagues down. When the levees broke in New Orleans images escaped television screens to tattoo every skin with the shameful reality that America’s towers fell twice. There was no phoenix. Only mosquitoes escaped the ashes, promising to puncture any still unbloodied with the needle kiss of plague. Then, a great swarm of dragonflies, sent by some other to even the odds. They feasted on the thin-limbed vampires, devoured body and virus, and then hovered around the floating bloated bodies of forgotten grandmothers, armored escorts of the dead. Their wings hummed swamp sonnets while their mouths swallowed maggots, thwarting attempts to hurry death beyond spring sunsets and autumn graves. They kept up their holy procession until New Orleans rebirthed jazz and cut the bodies loose and let saints march in all over again. As I steer my bike through one puddle after the other, making the street music urban rainforest dwellers know, I ask the splash to summon the dragonfly. Call her from the swamp into my throat to name the lump that will never loose me. Be my escort, gobble the flies ever entering me before their children become my whole.

these memories return to me sometimes, traveling down a very long passageway to arrive. and when they do, their unexpected power shakes me to the core. like an autumn wind that gusts at night, swirling fallen leaves in a forest, flattening the pampas grass in fields, and pounding hard on the doors to people's homes, over and over again.

When the snow arrives autumn has already done all the work, taking care of all the leaves and carefully sweeping summer away from people’s memories. All winter had to do was roll in with a bit of freezing weather and take all the credit, like a man who’s spent twenty minutes next to a barbecue but has never served a full meal in his life.

But still, these memories return to me sometimes, traveling down a very long passageway to arrive. And when they do, their unexpected power shakes me to de core. Like an autumn wind that gusts at night, swirling fallen leaves in a forest, flattening the pampas grass in fields, and pounding hard on the doors to people’s homes, over and over again.

APPLES SCENT, You arrive in the basement. Immediatly it catches you. Apples are here, lying on fruit trays, turned crates. You didn't think about it. You had no wish to be flooded by this melancholic wave. But you can't resist. Apple scent is a breaker. How could you manage without this childhood, bitter and sweet ? Shrivelled fruits surely are delicious, from this feak dryness where candied taste seems to have wormed in each wrinkle. But you don't wish to eat them. Particularly don't turn into an identifiable taste this floating power of smell. Say that it smells good, strong? But not ..... It's beyond .... An inner scent, scent of a better oneself. Here is shut up school autumn, with purple ink we scratch paper with down strokes and thin strokes. Rain bangs against glasses, evening will be long .... But apple perfume is more than past. You think about formerly because of fullness and intensity from a remembrance of salpetered cellar, dark attic. But it's to live here, stay here, stand up. You have behind you high herbs and damp orchards. Ahead it's like a warm blow given in the shade. Scent got all browns, all reds with a bit of green acid. Scent distilled skin softness, its tiny roughness. Lips dried, we alreadyt know that this thirst is not to be slaked. Nothing would happen if you bite the white flesh. You would need to become october, mud floor, moss of cellar, rain, expectation. Apple scent is painful. It's from a stronger life, a slowness we deserve no more.

The Mercy The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." She remembers trying to eat a banana without first peeling it and seeing her first orange in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her with a red bandana and taught her the word, "orange," saying it patiently over and over. A long autumn voyage, the days darkening with the black waters calming as night came on, then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space without limit rushing off to the corners of creation. She prayed in Russian and Yiddish to find her family in New York, prayers unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness before she woke, that kept "The Mercy" afloat while smallpox raged among the passengers and crew until the dead were buried at sea with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom. "The Mercy," I read on the yellowing pages of a book I located in a windowless room of the library on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days offshore in quarantine before the passengers disembarked. There a story ends. Other ships arrived, "Tancred" out of Glasgow, "The Neptune" registered as Danish, "Umberto IV," the list goes on for pages, November gives way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore. Italian miners from Piemonte dig under towns in western Pennsylvania only to rediscover the same nightmare they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.

IN THE AUTUMN of 1944, the Soviets received the first of many intelligence reports directly from Los Alamos. The spies overlooked by Army counterintelligence included Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist with British citizenship, and Ted Hall, a precociously brilliant nineteen-year-old with a Harvard B.S. in physics. Hall arrived in Los Alamos in late January 1944, while Fuchs came in August as part of the British team led by Rudolf Peierls. Fuchs,

It was a time, two hundred years ago …” It’s always two hundred years in Highland stories, said the Reverend Wakefield’s voice in memory. The same thing as “Once upon a time,” you know. And women trapped in the rocks of fairy duns, traveling far and arriving exhausted, who knew not where they had been, nor how they had come there. I could feel the hair rising on my forearms, as though with cold, and rubbed them uneasily. Two hundred years. From 1945 to 1743; yes, near enough.

I was amused and somewhat astonished at a critic a few years back who wrote an article analyzing Dandelion Wine plus the more realistic works of Sinclair Lewis, wondering how I could have been born and raised in Waukegan, which I renamed Green Town for my novel, and not noticed how ugly the harbor was and how depressing the coal docks and railyards down below the town. But, of course, I had noticed them and, genetic enchanter that I was, was fascinated by their beauty. Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become selfconscious about. Counting boxcars is a prime activity of boys. Their elders fret and fume and jeer at the train that holds them up, but boys happily count and cry the names of the cars as they pass from far places. And again, that supposedly ugly railyard was where carnivals and circuses arrived with elephants who washed the brick pavements with mighty steaming acid waters at five in the dark morning. As for the coal from the docks, I went down in my basement every autumn to await the arrival of the truck and its metal chute, which clanged down and released a ton of beauteous meteors that fell out of far space into my cellar and threatened to bury me beneath dark treasures. In other words, if your boy is a poet, horse manure can only mean flowers to him; which is, of course, what horse manure has always been about.

After an eventful journey - it was even life-threatening because of flooding in Como, which I only reached late at night - I arrived in Turin on the afternoon of the 21st, my proven place, my residence from then on. I took the same apartment that I had in the spring, via Carlo Alberto 6, III, across from the enormous Palazzo Carignano where Vittore Emanuele was born, with a view of the Piazza Carlo Alberto and the hills beyond. I went back to work without delay: only the last quarter of the work was left to be done. Great victory on 30 September; the conclusion of the Revaluation; the leisure of a god walking along the river Po. That same day, I wrote the Preface to Twilight of the Idols: I had corrected the manuscript for it in September, as my recuperation. - I never experienced an autumn like this before, I never thought anything like this could happen on earth, - a Claude Lorrain projected out to infinity, every day having the same tremendous perfection.

Mrs. Watson was feeling a little sorry for herself. Widowed, in the autumn of her life, her only relation away much of the year. But oh, such warmth radiated through her at Miss Holmes’s words, as if she’d swallowed a drop of sunfire and now glowed from within. True, certain beloved phases of her life had come to an end, but with Miss Holmes’s arrival, a whole new vista had opened up. And for one who had tended her years with care, autumn need not be a season of scarcity or regret—but one of harvest and celebration.

My life began by flickering out. It may sound strange but it is so. From the very first moment I became conscious of myself, I felt that I was already flickering out. I began to flicker out over the writing of official papers at the office; I went on flickering out when I read truths in books which I did not know how to apply in life, when I sat with friends listening to rumours, gossip, jeering, spiteful, cold, and empty chatter, and watching friendships kept up by meetings that were without aim or affection; I was flickering out and wasting my energies with Minna on whom I spent more than half of my income, imagining that I loved her; I was flickering out when I walked idly and dejectedly along Nevsky Avenue among people in raccoon coats and beaver collars – at parties, on reception days, where I was welcomed with open arms as a fairly eligible young man; I was flickering out and wasting my life and mind on trifles moving from town to some country house, and from the country house to Gorokhovaya, fixing the arrival of spring by the fact that lobsters and oysters had appeared in the shops, of autumn and winter by the special visiting days, of summer by the fêtes, and life in general by lazy and comfortable somnolence like the rest. ... Even ambition – what was it wasted on? To order clothes at a famous tailor's? To get an invitation to a famous house? To shake hands with Prince P.? And ambition is the salt of life! Where has it gone to? Either I have not understood this sort of life or it is utterly worthless; but I did not know of a better one. No one showed it to me.

This being human is a guest house, Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honourably, He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has sent as a guide from beyond.

This Only" A valley and above it forests in autumn colors. A voyager arrives, a map leads him there. Or perhaps memory. Once long ago in the sun, When snow first fell, riding this way He felt joy, strong, without reason, Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight, Of a train on the viaduct, a feast in motion. He returns years later, has no demands. He wants only one, most precious thing: To see, purely and simply, without name, Without expectations, fears, or hopes, At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

But what I thought of most was the ghostly figure I had seen in the garden that first night after my arrival. I went out every evening and wandered through the walks and paths; but, try as I might, I did not see my vision again. At last, after many days, the memory grew more faint, and my old moody nature gradually overcame the temporary sense of lightness I had experienced. The summer turned to autumn, and I grew restless. It began to rain. The dampness pervaded the gardens, and the outer halls smelled musty, like tombs; the grey sky oppressed me intolerably.

Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise, this grand marketplace lovingly stocked with every sublime thing: swarms of insects dancing in slant-rays of august sun; a trio of black horses standing hock-deep and head-to-head in a field of snow; a waft of beef broth arriving breeze-borne from an orange-hued window on a chill autumn—

ten years of living alone in the staff quarters and playing tour guide to the infrequent potential buyers who arrived by water taxi, a decade of weekly trips to Port Hardy for supplies, cleaning the hotel, mowing the grass, meeting with repairmen when necessary, reading in the afternoons, teaching himself to play piano on the abandoned Steinway in the lobby, walking to the village of Caiette for coffee with Melissa; ten years of wandering by himself in the forest, watching the first pale flowers push through dark earth in the springtime, swimming by the pier in the hottest days of summer and reading on a balcony under blankets in the clear autumn light, sitting alone in the lobby with the lights out for the thrill of winter storms.

A breeze with September in it blew in off the water. Teddy inhaled deeply. Autumn, even in his childhood, had always been his favorite season. When you’re a kid and your parents are teachers, it’s September, not January, that marks the beginning of a year. He’d always been the first one back to Minerva and loved having the campus all to himself for a day or two before the other students and faculty began trickling back in. Lincoln always arrived next, and then Mickey, since his band usually played somewhere in town the first weekend before classes started. Jacy was always last, coming as late as the middle of the first week of classes. Things couldn’t really begin until then. “You know who I was thinking about on the ferry?” Teddy ventured. “Yep,” Lincoln said. “I do.” And they left it at that.

free copy of Donald Duck that fell through the letter box one autumn day, featuring a lottery with a thousand wristwatches (a thousand iPads in today’s youth economy) to give away. Not to mention the content. Donald Duck as a teacher. The nephews squash an ice cream onto their weary uncle’s forehead. Wasting a whole ice cream without a second thought! At some point, from that same America, packets of green-and-white powder arrived that a housewife could instantly transform into a pan of soup. ‘California’, the concoction was called. ‘California,’ we whispered. California. In the provincial town where I grew up, we lugged the cabbage, lettuce and potatoes we’d grown on our allotment past several new factories on the Marshallweg, a road named after a general who, as I understood it, had paid to set up all

What if I had made different choices from the start? What if I had stuck around to watch another year of seasons spin here in Oxford, staying to see the daffodils bloom or to wander beneath the privet tunnel hand in hand with Fisher? What if we had kept right on kissing until the naked ladies emerged near the Osage orange? What if I had lingered long enough to see cape jasmine arrive, her voluptuous white bundles an aromatic call for summer love? Or even longer, when the spider lilies burst open in the fall and the yellow autumn light fell low among missy roots? What if I had stayed through winter, forming snow angels with my lover beneath the icy cedar boughs? What if I had not let fear defeat me after Fisher knelt before me in my mother's backyard garden, ring in his hand and happy-ever-after in his heart?

The sight of his brother and the proximity of death renewed in Levin's soul that feeling of horror at the inscrutability, nearness and inevitability of death which had seized him on that autumn evening when his brother had arrived in the country. That feeling was now stronger even than before; he felt even less able than before to understand the meaning of death, and its inevitability appeared yet more terrible to him; but now, thanks to his wife's presence, that feeling did not drive him to despair; in spite of death, he felt the necessity of living and loving. He felt that love had saved him from despair, and that that love under the menace of despair grew still stronger and purer. Scarcely had the unexplained mystery of death been enacted before his eyes when another mystery just as inexplicable presented itself, calling to love and life. The doctor confirmed their supposition about Kitty. Her illness was pregnancy.

Edinolochniks [individual peasant farmers] are whitewashing their khatas [simple Ukrainian houses]. They look at us with a challenge in their eyes: ‘It’s Easter.’ The implication behind this strange remark in autumn was the hint that they were celebrating the arrival of the most joyful moment of the year. Some historians have suggested that the Germans, with black crosses on their vehicles, were seen as bringing Christian liberation to a population oppressed by Soviet atheism. Many Ukrainians did welcome the Germans with bread and salt, and many Ukrainian girls consorted cheerfully with German soldiers. It is hard to gauge the scale of this phenomenon in statistical terms, but it is significant that the Abwehr, the Germany Army intelligence department, recommended that an army of a million Ukrainians should be raised to fight the Red Army. This was firmly rejected by Hitler who was horrified at the suggestion of Slavs fighting in Wehrmacht uniform.

Such moments are too often lost, the private interludes between the tribal gatherings, the transit between destinations, when the city becomes an intimate landscape, a secret shared by two. This was once their neighborhood and she wants to reclaim it for a little while, to walk past the apartment where they spent so much of their lives, even if it makes her sad thinking of all that transpired there, and all that’s lost. It makes her melancholy to imagine that she might never be here again, that these blocks, their former haunts, and their old building will outlast them; that the city is supremely indifferent to their transit through its arteries, and to their ultimate destination. For now, she wants just to be in between. She knows that later it won’t be the party she will remember so much as this, the walk with her husband in the crisp autumn air, bathed in the yellow metropolitan light spilling from thousands of windows, this suspended moment of anticipation before arrival.

Zoey picked up her spoon and tasted it, and she was immediately and startlingly transported to a perfect autumn childhood day, the kind of day when sunlight is short but it's still warm enough to play outside. For the second course, the chilled crab cake was only the size of a silver dollar and the mustard cream and the green endive were just splashes of color on the plate. The visual experience was like dreaming of faraway summer while staring at Christmas lights through a frosty window. The third course brought to mind the first hot day of spring, when it's too warm to eat in the house so you sit outside with a dinner plate of Easter ham and corn on your lap and a bottle of Coca-Cola sweating beside you. Zoey could feel the excitement of summer coming, and she couldn't wait for it. And then summer arrived with the final course. And, like summer always is, it was worth the wait. The tiny container looked like a miniature milk glass, and the whipped milk in it reminded her of cold, sweet soft-serve ice cream on a day when the pavement burns through flip-flops and even shade trees are too hot to sit under. The savory bits of crispy cornbread mixed in gave the dessert a satisfying campfire crunch.

At the end of that week, Navin arrived to marry me. I was repulsed by the sight of him, not because I had betrayed him but because he still breathed, because he was there for me and had countless more days to live. And yet without his even realizing it, firmly but without force, Navin pulled me away from you, as the final gust of autumn wind pulls the last leaves from the trees. We were married, we were blessed, my hand was placed on top of his, and the ends of our clothing were knotted together. ... I returned to my existence, the existence I had chosen instead of you. It was another winter in Massachusetts, thirty years after you and your parents had first gone away. In February, Giovanna got in touch to say she had heard the news from Paola. A small obituary ran in The New York Times. By then I needed no proof of you absence from the world; I felt it as plainly and implacably as the cells that were gathering and shaping themselves in my body. Those cold, dark days I spent in bed, unable to speak, burning with new life but mourning your death, went unquestioned by Navin, who had already begun to take a quiet pride in my condition. ... It might have been your child but this was not the case. We had been careful, and you had left nothing behind.

two nieces. But time is running out. Down on her luck Charleston, SC restaurateur, Darcy Witherspoon is licking a wounded ego when she arrives in Black Moose, VT and meets the handsome Maple

Dulles had arranged to send Dr. Cameron to Nuremberg to assess the mental state of Rudolf Hess prior to his trial. In May 1941, the Deputy Fuhrer had flown to Scotland with the avowed aim of ending the war. Hess had been brought to Nuremberg to stand trial with other Nazi leaders, having been pronounced sane by a British psychiatrist. The Americans and the Russians were co-prosecutors in the war crimes trial and insisted on their own psychiatric evaluation. On a late autumn day in 1945, Dr. Cameron arrived in Nuremberg a city which had been the nursery of Nazism. Over dinner in the cavernous dining room of the refurbished Grand Hotel, Dulles told Dr. Cameron an astounding story. He said he had reason to believe that the man Dr. Cameron was to examine was not Rudolf Hess but an impostor. The real Deputy-Fuhrer had been secretly executed on Churchill’s orders. Dulles explained how Dr. Cameron could confirm the point by a simple physical examination of the man’s torso. If he was the genuine Hess, there should be scar tissue over his left lung, a legacy from the day the young Hess had been wounded in World War I. Dr. Cameron had agreed to try to physically examine the prisoner.

Genar-Hofoen had arrived a few days after the end of Tier’s annual Festival. There was an air of autumnal desuetude mixed with high-summer torpor about the place when he arrived; people were cleaning up, calming down, getting back to normal and generally behaving themselves. He’d signalled ahead and succeeded in booking the services of an erotroupe as well as reserving a garden penthouse in the View, the best hotel on Level Three.

I'm in my thirties and wish for different things every hour, but am incapable of fulfilling them... although I'm perfectly capable of walking through a romantic, melancholy autumn afternoon, thinking about what to say when the moment arrives.

Autumn, when it came, slipped in through a side door and suddenly was just there, like a guest who’d arrived early for a party.

Fall" Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season Changes its tense in the long-haired maples That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition With the final remaining cardinals) and then Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground. At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance, A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment Pulling out of the station according to schedule, Another moment arriving on the next platform. It Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away From their branches and gather slowly at our feet, Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving Around us even as its colorful weather moves us, Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets. And every year there is a brief, startling moment When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air: It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies; It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

When autumn kisses nature with golden rays of a sinking sun and carving winds, does a tree say: “No, I can’t, I’m not ready to let go of my leaves, I need them!”Nature cleans up after herself on a daily basis. She recognizes the need for space, for letting go in order for fresh growth to appear. She’s built for possibility, for letting go of the old and embracing the new. However, we accumulate, gather, hold onto and refuse to give space for the opportunity for the new to arrive and we often do it with our “stuff”. We hold on tight to our things, clothes, books, magazines, dishes and so much more. We do it with our emotions and our thoughts as well. We clutter our homes and our hearts.

The last of our summer visitants has taken his departure. About a fortnight ago a Chiff-chaff was constantly to be seen hopping about the Goose-berry bushes in the garden: - the last t leave us, he is usually the first to arrive.

The last of our summer visitants has taken his departure. About a fortnight ago a Chiff-chaff was constantly to be seen hopping about the Goose-berry bushes in the garden: - the last to leave us, he is usually the first to arrive.

The slanting rays of the autumn sun, the coldness of spring water, the towering trees, the birds, the aquatic creatures, the reptiles, and the flow of life! In a moment, I surrendered myself to the icy water that burned to the bone! I loved the cold, but feared it at the same time. When the air is cold, when your being is frozen, you will experience a kind of coma that enforces justice. When in life, pleasure has been withheld from you, the cold also takes away the joy of expressing your pain. I looked at the sky, my wandering mind and free spirit fled to the Arctic and Antarctic! It’s cold and frozen there too. Always cold, and sometimes dark for long periods! I wanted to surrender my whole being to the frost, to let complete suppression and endless cold dominate me! I was overwhelmed. If awareness is a match, then doctrines, religions, every group, sect, country, and ideology, are other matches to ignite hell for you! Awareness, spirituality, humanity, or simply put, absolute perfection and beauty, I imagine as being seven layers deep in hell, while compounded ignorance feels like a clear and moderate sky. The middle ground wasn’t for me, so I found the only solution was to seal hell and bury it under thousands upon thousands of icy stones! At that moment, as my body shivered in the spring water, my soul hovered around the Arctic and Antarctic. Ah, another spark, another thought of winter creeping into my mind! My mind said, the Arctic and Antarctic, over time, through the sun’s rays or human filth, will eventually fall and melt, what if someone arrives with unconditional love and pulls you back to that same hell? I was tired of empty words and impossible thoughts, but my mind was right! I remembered the sky, the sky always holds an answer! Mars! That was it, Mars! Mars, which billions of years ago was a cradle of life! What did it do? It lost its atmosphere due to its cold core, and the sun’s kindness wiped life away into space. The remaining water froze somewhere inside it, and never flowed again. Oh, my Mars, you are my role model. First, I must destroy awareness and render it useless, then I’ll seek out love to cleanse what remains of my emotions and let it go. But Mars, what should I do with the flowing waters of love that will freeze inside me? What if one day a madman from nowhere comes and gets the idea to revive me, seeking refuge in me? #Arash_Ghadir #ArashGhadir

OCTOBER MORNINGS How your eyes gleamed like emeralds once autumn's first day arrived, how amber was the glance that met my tired eyes. Like silk was the light of morning that came through half-shut doors and made a line of gold upon our bedroom floor. Silent creeks empty hallways full of doubt, the room is empty now.

It wasn’t quite ten yet, but the town was already waking up, the soft patter of rain against the windows adding to the comforting hush of the bookstore. Outside, Maple Street lay still, the orange and red leaves swirling along the sidewalk like confetti, signaling the arrival of autumn—my favorite season.

THE BALLADE OF SUMMER'S FALL Hues of pale green, on delicate olive branches the soft rustling of somberness along the fields of gold that lay themselves to gentle rest after another long summer. I have nothing to bury under them except my own heart -that is my soul's greatest regret, once my lines begin to fill in autumn, under the velvet gloom of shortening days. The admiration of the Florentine sun had doomed my words to become eventually a remembrance once September falls in October's pale hands. I shall have nothing to grieve for once the winter arrives, coming over the distant hills and laying bare the orchards along his way. I doomed them to become ruins by overthinking, hoping - at least once too often - for change; So, let it be then. I will mourn my mere passion for life in the presence of death - though my art may be eternal.

Pole, his right foot to the (unseen) South Pole. leaving his third step to fall on the head of Bali (in this version, Orion). Here Vamana would have arrived at Bali’s sacrifice on the winter solstice, when the sun is a “dwarf” because he cannot stretch his feet (rays) all the way to the North Pole. The three steps could also apply to the system of reckoning which takes one human year to equal one day and night of the devas. When during this period the Sun moves from the vernal equinox to the autumnal equinox (during which time it appears above the celestial equator in the sky), it is day for the devas and night for the asuras, and when the Sun moves from the autumnal equinox to the vernal equinox (during which time it appears below the celestial equator in the sky), it becomes night tor the devas and day for the asuras. While the asuras rule during their day the devas are discomfited, but with the coming of the vernal equinox (sunrise on the day of the devas) the order of the universe is renewed through noon (the summer solstice) until sunset (the autumnal equinox), after which the asuras again get their chance to play about. Bali

My first and lasting impression of the Connecticut River Valley is its serene beauty, especially in the autumn months. Deep River was a near picture-perfect New England village. When I arrived there, the town was a typical working-class place, nothing like the trendy upper-income enclave it became. The town center had a cluster of shops, a movie theater open only on weekends, several white-steepled churches (none of them Catholic), the town hall, and a Victorian library. It was small, even by Ansonia standards.

One sizable gift came in 1994, when he gave enough to be listed as a “founder” of the Penn Club’s new location in midtown Manhattan. The minimum gift for that category was $150,000. Two autumns later, Donald Trump Jr. arrived at the leafy campus. In all, three of the four older Trump children—including Ivanka (transferring after two years at Georgetown) and Tiffany—would attend Penn, making the school almost an inheritance, a family emblem. In

Blood at the Root' is an attempt to understand how the people of my home place arrived at that moment, and to trace the origins of the 'whites only' world they fought so desperately to preserve. To do that, we will need to go all the way back to the beginning of the racial cleansing, in the violent months of September and October 1912. That was the autumn when white men first loaded their saddlebags with shotgun shells, coils of rope, cans of kerosene, and sticks of dynamite - and used them to send the black people of Forsyth County running for their lives.

She’d sworn she wouldn’t end up like her little brother, but loneliness didn’t arrive with flashing bulbs and a warning label. The descent was as simple and complex as a faked smile, white lies about being “okay,” and the nod and acceptance as her own peers didn’t delve deeper, shutting the coffin lid for her.

Kane sat on his back porch, listening to the birds chirp and letting the cool spring breeze blow across his skin, ruffling his hair. He tightened the sweater around his chest. Avery's latest bouquet had arrived this morning, about the same time Autumn had come to check on him. She called the unexpected visit 'time alone' with her father, but Kane knew her true motivation. These unannounced visits were growing in frequency, and the frowns were more pronounced each time the children stopped by. Kane tried to care, tried to ease their worry, but apparently no matter what he said or did, they had their own thoughts and nothing seemed to make them feel any better once they'd arrived.

Two years before our arrival at Maplehurst, we had left the Midwest eager for new jobs, milder weather, and a house of our own with a real backyard. We were unprepared for the enormity of our losses. Good friends. Close-knit community. A meaningful connection with the work of our minds and our hands. There was one lost thing, in particular. It was such a natural part of our prewilderness lives that I only ever recognized it after it was gone. In our northern city, we had lived a seasonal rhythm of summer festivals and winter sledding, spring baseball games and autumn apple picking. Our moments and our months were distinguished by the color of the trees, deep red or spring green, and the color of the lake, sparkling and playful in summer, menacing and dull in winter. These things were the beautiful, sometimes harsh, but always rhythmic backdrop in our days. Time was like music. It had a melody. In the wilderness, the only thing that differentiated one season from the next was my terrible winter asthma. Without time's music, I became aimless and disconnected, like a child's lost balloon.

Elianne du Hommet ran, her soldier-escort panting at her heels. Beneath awnings raised against the day’s unusual heat, Knabwell’s startled merchants left off their haggling to stare after the sheriff’s grown daughter. Tethered chickens squawked and flapped out of her way. Stubblefed geese, an autumn delicacy, hissed from their wicker carriers. Elianne’s companion collided with an unfortunate housewife, spilling the contents of the hapless woman’s basket. "The lord sheriff’s business," he shouted by way of apology to the townswoman as he sprinted to catch his charge. Together they flew out onto the higher of Knabwell’s two cobbled thoroughfares. The soldier shot a look toward the city’s southern gate. "Jesus save us! That’s Haydon’s party," he cried. "Hurry! He wants you at the priory before they arrive." Elianne threw a glance over her shoulder.

IT ALL STARTED SO PEACEFULLY, JUST A FEW SHORT WEEKS AGO, on a lovely day in early autumn. I had driven in to work as I always did, through the happy carnage that is rush hour in Miami. It had been a bright and pleasant day: sun shining, temperature in the seventies, the other drivers cheerfully honking their horns and screaming death threats, and I’d steered through it with a blissful feeling of belonging. I had pulled into a spot in the parking lot at police HQ, still completely unaware of the lurking terror that awaited me, and carefully carried a large box of doughnuts into the building and up to the second floor. I’d arrived at my desk punctually, at my usual time. And I made it all the way into a seated position in my chair, a cup of vile coffee in one hand and a jelly doughnut in the other, before I ever for a moment suspected that today would be anything other than one more day of peaceful routine among the newly dead of Our Fair City. And then the phone on my desk began to buzz, and because I was stupid enough to answer it, everything changed forever.

As if the weather knew the calendar the last day of August broke with a hard killing frost. Where the sun fell the world spangled, autumn arriving in glacial brilliance, almost suggesting snow over the grass and low shrubbery. Where the sun has not yet struck it was ghostly, a pewter finish over the sagging grass and wilted goldenrod stems. The pods of milkweed were brittle and broke open to release their slight spherical webs of seed onto any straggle of breeze. Smoke streamed white straight up from chimney tops and mist obscured the lake, hanging in sheets of cold vapor that disintegrated slowly from the top down as the sun came over the hills. A third-quarter moon hung against the endless fathoms of a colbalt heaven, the moon a quartzite river stone.

Hues of pale green, on delicate olive branches the soft rustling of somberness along the fields of gold that lay themselves to gentle rest after another long summer. I have nothing to bury under them except my own heart -that is my soul's greatest regret, once my lines begin to fill in autumn, under the velvet gloom of shortening days. The admiration of the Florentine sun had doomed my words to become eventually a remembrance once September falls in October's pale hands. I shall have nothing to grieve for once the winter arrives, coming over the distant hills and laying bare the orchards along his way. I doomed them to become ruins by overthinking, hoping - at least once too often - for change; So, let it be then. I will mourn my mere passion for life in the presence of death - though my art may be eternal.

What if I had made different choices from the start? What if I had stuck around to watch another year of seasons spin here in Oxford, staying to see the daffodils bloom or to wander beneath the privet tunnel hand in hand with Fisher? What if we had kept right on kissing until the naked ladies emerged near the Osage orange? What if I had lingered long enough to see cape jasmine arrive, her voluptuous white bundles an aromatic call for summer love? Or even longer, when the spider lilies burst open in the fall and the yellow autumn light fell low among mossy roots? What if I had stayed through winter, forming snow angels with my lover beneath the icy cedar boughs? What if I had not let fear defeat me after Fisher knelt before me in my mother's backyard garden, ring in his hand and happy-ever-after in his heart?

the other day when we were up at the allotments.’ ‘Ooh yes . . .’ said Emmy. ‘The mysterious William Jones. Does anyone know anything about him?’ ‘Nope,’ laughed Lucy. ‘But no doubt the poor man will be the talk of Little Bamton the minute he arrives!’ ‘So true,’ chuckled Emmy. 'It's bizarre though, don't you think?!' said Sue. 'Horace has lived so quietly up at the

The autumn had been unseasonably dry, and the vines that had taken up residence on the canal side of the brick wall surrounding the property extended themselves in parched desperation towards the water. Brunetti was struck by the resemblance between the vines, exposed to the sun almost all day, every day, and The Raft of the Medusa. The human limbs in the foreground of the painting, like the vines on the wall, fell weakly towards the water, while the figures behind stretched towards a glimpse of what might be a boat, a speck of land, or yet another swiftly arriving wave, bent on their destruction. How much worse the vines looked than the men on the raft, even though the accounts of the incident that had inspired the painting spoke of dehydration and starvation.