Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells

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Iyer seems to suggest that Japanese culture helps the people navigate these inevitable seasons better than most. At a local park, Iyer hears schoolkids chanting a well-known Japanese song, a lesson that gives its children a heads-up on the blurred lines between life and death, beauty and decay, the subject he ruminates on throughout this genuine and loving tale: “Bright though they are in color, blossoms fall. Which of us escapes the world of change? We cross the farthest limits of our destiny, and let foolish dreams and illusions all be gone.” Nearly didn't finish. I don't have too many of those. Iyer is a really talented writer. But ugh. Most of his statements about this culture are total b. s., or should I say more diplomatically, not at all my experience having lived in Japan for three decades. But there’s an exchange at the end of the movie that more deeply captures what Iyer’s entire book is getting at — the lesson that autumn teaches us about life. After the mother of the family dies, the youngest daughter, who is in her early 20s, asks, “Isn’t life disappointing?” Her slightly older sister-in-law, who is already eight years a widow, smiles sympathetically and says, “Yes, it is.” Because the Gregorian calendar is not quite in perfect symmetry with the Earth's orbit, the autumn equinox will very occasionally fall on September 24. This last happened in 1931 and will next happen in 2303. 7. Persephone's return

Rather than a story, Iyer has written an ode to autumn — not for its blazing maples, but because it is the inward-looking season “when everything falls away.” Instead of his usual travel writing, he’s aiming for a “seasonal exploration of mood and dissolving families,” in the style of a Yasujirō Ozu film — a “little no-action movie,” as Hiroko suggests. And while Iyer does refer to several Ozu films — especially Tokyo Story (1953) — the book brings to mind the solemn work of Ingmar Bergman, who also frames his narratives within seasons: Summer with Monika (1953), Winter Light (1963), Autumn Sonata (1978). “The season,” Iyer writes, “is a kind of religion, I think, to which we offer poems and petitions, but it’s not one you believe in so much as simply inhabit.” Autumn Light is like that — you get inside of it. Like the films of Ozu and Bergman, Iyer’s book is something you feel from within — a mood that is being conveyed. It’s likely that the weather will also get pretty chilly as the season wares on. Think twice before booking that terrace seating and remember to wrap up warm. The cover of Pico Iyer’s Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells is adorned with a spray of spring blossoms. Pretty white flowers, picture postcard perfect: incongruous, at first glance, with even the very title of the book. These flowers belong in spring, not in autumn. But pay closer attention, and you see that the flowers are falling, shedding petals as they drift down. Dying already, the invisible parent tree above them already moving closer to the next season.

IN MATSUO BASHŌ’S travel-sketch The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton, the 17th-century Japanese poet wanders west from Edo (Tokyo) toward Kyoto, returning to his hometown in Ueno, where he hasn’t set foot in ages. “Nothing remained the same in my native village,” he writes. “Even the faces of my brothers had changed with wrinkles and white hair, and we simply rejoiced to see each other alive.” Bashō’s eldest brother takes out a small amulet bag, opens it, and says, “See your mother’s frosty hairs.” After weeping for a few moments, Bashō composes a poem: The autumn brings loss, death and suffering which he says is a quintessential meaning of life, his admiration for his wife, acceptance of her family and kids as his own is so beautiful. When she has a sudden episode of Transient global amnesia, he is scared of losing her, what if she loses all her memories, his fear of the worst.

If your kids are looking forward to Halloween they will love a visit one of English Heritage’s creepy castles that will be open in October. John Keats' 1820 ode to the fall season is one of the great classics of the poetic movement of Romanticism. The poem is a rich description of the beautyof autumn that focuses on both its lush and sensual fruitfulness and the melancholy hint of shorter days. Keats ends his poem evoking the closing of the season and finding a parallel in the beauty of an early-evening sunset. His words depict the haunting beauty in the quiet winding down into winter.

7. Love Light Norwich

This book is beautiful in its melancholy even when it feels morbid as it reminds you of the fact that everyone you love with die and all you can do is be with them and enjoy every moment and relive those moments as memories. A study in the Journal of Aging Research found that babies born during the autumn months are more likely to live to 100 than those born during the rest of the year.

Plant in October without fear, unless you have heavy clay. If so, keep your pots in a dry position, fleece in winter and plant in spring. Where to plant There is a remarkable ease to Pico Iyer’s liquid, conversational prose, as when he writes, “I’d moved to Japan, I thought, to learn how to live with less hurry and fear of time [ … ] to learn how best to dissolve a sense of self within something larger and less temporary.” Even his spoken dialogue consists of well-crafted sentences. When Hiroko is quoted, however, the language is abrupt and simple. “I cannot shrine this year,” she says, and, “Summer little ending. Now come autumn.” It is unclear whether we are meant to understand that the couple is speaking English or Japanese; in another book, Iyer writes that he seldom speaks English in Japan, but here, he suggests that they converse in his own tongue: “Japanese has only two tenses, and in Hiroko’s homemade ideogrammatic English, things grow doubly conflated, especially as she’s more comfortable in present tense than past.” So there’s 10 ideas and hundreds of suggestions for outdoor things to do in England this autumn. What takes your fancy? I didn’t expect anything about this book since this is my first time reading the book from Pico Iyer. It’s still enjoyable.But as a True Autumn, you can even take on more contrast than that. Feel free to pair neighbouring hues with similar values, such as a medium orange with a medium pink. Autumn “is not a sequel to the book I wrote on Japan twenty-eight years ago, except insofar as autumn is a sequel—a prequel—to spring, the companion piece that rounds the picture out.” PI In line with this season’s secondary aspect, the colours are medium-low in chroma. This means they are not saturated. However, the colours may overall appear more saturated because our eyes are more reactive to warm colours. Cut out some of the weaker stems and water well if the weather has been dry, for these plants are used to a damp, warm Asian summer so they need moisture to grow well. Caring for Chrysanthemums Whatever it is, Autumn is beautiful, with its colors, smells and the chilling breezes. And that season is made all the more beautiful by Iyer in his book, which feels like it has no plot but makes you realize that, that is the whole point.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. He does, however, spend a lot of time telling readers how good they are to their parents. He even mentioned the number of cruises he has taken his mom on.The weather in Norway in September can still be enjoyable. This is when the summer transitions into the golden colors of early autumn. With his latest book, “Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells,” Iyer finds himself once again in Japan, which for decades has been his chosen second home. His Japanese wife, Hiroko, a more pragmatic and uncomplicated soul than her spouse, has just lost her nonagenarian father, a man who survived the bombing of his native Hiroshima because he was away, fighting in World War II. One thing to be sure of is that any season, especially autumn in Norway, as well as Norway’s winter, can be unpredictable. We often notice the nights begin to draw in from this point as after the autumn equinox, the nights are longer than the days, until this is reversed at the spring equinox. 6. A date for your diary - 24 September 2303 Beautifully written. This is such a calm book to read. It’s about autumn, about aging, fear of change, about the loss of loved ones and about courage. A lovely meditation on time.