Autumn (Seasonal, #1)

by Ali Smith

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Again. That’s the thing about things. They fall apart, always have, always will, it’s in their nature.

Seems the self you get left with on the shore, in the end, is the self that you were when you went.

How many worlds can you hold in a hand. In a handful of sand.

Regrets when you’re dead? A past when you’re dead? Is there never any escaping the junkshop of the self?

In any case, it’s one of those coincidences that on TV and in books might mean something but in real life mean nothing at all.

The lifelong friends, he said. We sometimes wait a lifetime for them.

I’m tired of the news. I’m tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren’t, and deals so simplistically with what’s truly appalling.

I’m tired of lying governments. I’m tired of people not caring whether they’re being lied to any more. I’m tired of being made to feel this fearful. I’m tired of animosity. I’m tired of pusillanimosity.

All across the country, the country was divided, a fence here, a wall there, a line drawn here, a line crossed there, a line you don’t cross here, a line you better not cross there, a line of beauty here, a line dance there, a line you don’t even know exists here, a line you can’t afford there, a whole new line of fire, line of battle, end of the line, here/there.

It is like democracy is a bottle someone can threaten to smash and do a bit of damage with. It has become a time of people saying stuff to each other and none of it actually ever becoming dialogue. It is the end of dialogue.

Somehow this wasn’t the same as melancholy. It was something else, about how melancholy and nostalgia weren’t relevant in the slightest. Things just happened. Then they were over. Time just passed. Partly it felt unpleasant, to think like that, rude even. Partly it felt good. It was kind of a relief.

Nobody spoke like Daniel. Nobody didn’t speak like Daniel.

She has found by experience that she is in a world where female emancipation is a password and not a fact – she is beautiful, therefore she should not be clever.

N.D. Men think of you just as a pretty girl you mean? P.B. No. They just find it embarrassing when you start talking. Lots of women are intellectually more clever than lots of men. But it’s difficult for men to accept the idea. N.D. If you start talking about ideas they just think you’re putting it on? P.B. Not that you’re putting it on. They just find it slightly embarrassing that you’re not doing the right thing.

It is possible, he said, to be in love not with someone but with their eyes. I mean, with how eyes that aren’t yours let you see where you are, who you are.

We have to hope, Daniel was saying, that the people who love us and who know us a little bit will in the end have seen us truly. In the end, not much else matters.

It is a privilege, to watch someone sleep, Elisabeth tells herself. It is a privilege to be able to witness someone both here and not here. To be included in someone’s absence, it is an honour, and it asks quiet. It asks respect. No. It is awful. It is fucking awful. It is awful to be on the literal other side of his eyes.

I know nothing, nothing really, about anyone. Maybe nobody does.

Time travel is real, Daniel said. We do it all the time. Moment to moment, minute to minute.

See how it’s deep in our animal nature, Daniel said. Not to see what’s happening right in front of our eyes.

October’s a blink of the eye. The apples weighing down the tree a minute ago are gone and the tree’s leaves are yellow and thinning. A frost has snapped millions of trees all across the country into brightness. The ones that aren’t evergreen are a combination of beautiful and tawdry, red orange gold the leaves, then brown, and down.

Hope is exactly that, that’s all it is, a matter of how we deal with the negative acts towards human beings by other human beings in the world, remembering that they and we are all human, that nothing human is alien to us, the foul and the fair, and that most important of all we’re here for a mere blink of the eyes, that’s all.

I’m all the leaves. You’re all the leaves. Yes. So, have you fallen? Are you still waiting to fall? In the autumn? In the summer if it’s stormy?

There’s always, there’ll always be, more story. That’s what story is. (Silence.) It’s the never-ending leaf-fall. (Silence.)

Elisabeth grimaced. Every morning she wakes up feeling cheated of something. The next thing she thinks about, when she does, is the number of people waking up feeling cheated of something all over the country, no matter what they voted.

It’s all right to forget, you know, he said. It’s good to. In fact, we have to forget things sometimes. Forgetting it is important. We do it on purpose. It means we get a bit of a rest. Are you listening? We have to forget. Or we’d never sleep ever again.

A great many men don’t understand a woman full of joy, even more don’t understand paintings full of joy by a woman.