Long summer days are over, on the wrong side of this year’s equinox. They’re the stuff advertisements and music videos are made of: venturing abroad, chasing romance, staying out late. But they’re draining, too, hot and persistent, full of noise. This past summer was particularly loud and stifling and cluttered, with the fever pitch of political theater bleeding into the furious
heat. On some interminable afternoons, it was hard to tell if I owed my periodic headache to the news or the weather or some awful combination of the two.
The news won’t stop. This summer, there were trials literal and figurative, feuds, scandals, the seething sense of mistrust that permeates all of politics now, and the ominous possibility that things will feel this way forever. None of that is likely to vanish anytime soon. But the longer nights of autumn bring some comfort.
Fall
arrives like extended twilight. The hot months are brutal for all kinds of reasons, and among them is that the obstinate white light of day exposes, at times, more than what’s tolerable. People pour into the world, and it always seems there’s something to say, or some occasion demanding conversation. With politics particularly polarized and engulfing more and more of our conversational territory, self-exposure is always on demand: You must pay attention, you must be present, you must have a
position and make it known.
But in autumn, the evening of the year, a gradual hush falls over nature, its human parts included. In the darkness, it’s easier to avoid summons to public attention. The day’s events remain, but the ambient sense of expectation that thrums throughout the daytime eases. When you might credibly be sleeping, you’re free to say nothing at all, and nobody will think anything of it. When it’s dark out, the world itself seems to hesitate. There’s sanctuary in that
pause...
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