Shadows Falling Over the Colors of Autumn

The natural melancholy (but I like it, I like it) of fall suddenly seems doubled when we put our clocks back an hour and go on daylight-saving time. Or is it off daylight-saving time? I never can remember which it is; I only know dark closes down an hour earlier at night. Presumably this means daylight is an hour earlier. I do not know this for a fact since daybreak never sees me looking at it, but I am content to take others’ word for it.

I do know it is pitch dark before any reasonably civilized person can even begin thinking of dinner and I don’t like it. I haven’t found anyone who likes it. The farmers, they say, like it; they have more light to milk their cows. I do not know many people in Pasadena who own cows or in Beverly Hills or Los Angeles either for that matter, do you? Anyway, they have machines for that now, don’t they? I’m sure they do in Beverly Hills.

But there you are, driving north along the arroyo bank in Pasadena and on your left the sky over Los Angeles is all orange-sherbet colored while the leaves of the sycamore trees on your right are burnt orange and ahead of you over the San Gabriel Mountains the sky has paled to the faintest shade of orange, as though it were faded chiffon. The trees along the tops of the hills are silhouettes, pure black against the orange. Here it is not yet 5 o’clock and already the cars on the freeway below have their lights on.

With the daylight going, the joggers dwindle down to a precious few--what do all those after-5 o’clock joggers do for exercise now?

The streets are as bare of dogs or cats as if it were midnight and any kids on bicycles are already on their way home.

It’s every bit as warm at this hour as it was before we turned the clocks back (and why is it every year someone has to remind me to do that; I never seemed attuned to the elemental facts of time change as ordinary mortals are) and yet simply the lack of light makes us wish for a sweater.

Sere --how can we think of that cold, bare word in sunny California just because it is November?

Oh well, we do like to mix in a little romance when fall comes to California: it adds that bit of nostalgia necessary to autumn.