The man in the corner store tells me that this autumn is the rainiest he’s ever seen. And colder, too. A neighbor of mine winks, then later tells me that he says this every year around this time. It reminds me of me, as I say this every year, too: Autumn is the time to remember. Still, it has been raining a lot. Not like Portland, Oregon rain, but rain nonetheless. For a high tech country, sometimes China can really seem really low tech. Like when it rains. Hard. The streets flood wide all across the city. Legions of day-glo, orange-suited workers use ancient brooms to sweep the water toward the storm drains. The first time I saw it, I gaped, thinking it an aberration, but it happens every time. Today the skies were coal smoke gray. On the main east-west road they are building a subway. Traffic slaloms through obstacles, machinery hulks, blue metal walls shield the workers, everything is muddy, clean black pants last maybe five minutes without streaks, crazy water-spraying trucks, playing Italian opera—vertebrae-creaking loud—shuttle back and forth trying to keep the dust down. On the road I first came into the city, low, green army tents are pitched, housing workers. Savory cooking smells pour from the tent that will later feed them, mixing with the dinosaur stench of construction grease, orange hard hat sweatbands, the acrid sneaker-mud smell of unpoured concrete, rust, the rubber balloon smell of blocked traffic angst, mixing with autumn seeding and decay, and the impatient horns with which no Chinese driver can ever operate without. In typical Chinese fashion, everyone moves about, unperturbed, swerving around, dodging through, making do, sensing obstacles in advance and automatically adjusting their forward momentum, like a stream around boulders, never pausing in conversation, never outwardly acknowledging, so used to something always being in their way that the citizens have developed an immunity to it, and sometimes I have to just stand back in awe and watch the people flow about. Walking back this evening in the rain I gave up all hope of staying dry, shielded from the downpour by my favorite collapsing faux-leopard umbrella that I bought for ten RMB (approx. $1.40) a season or two ago, watching those caught umbrella-less trying to duck through the rain like beasts trying to outrun a forest fire. The score for the scene would be George Winston playing piano, working the pedals in soggy socks, sweeping up and down the keyboard like on his track entitled Autumn, or maybe even the ethereal December. In this way, I watched China and remembered autumn. In the let-out-of-work hordes, I remembered other umbrella’d crowds in San Jose, Costa Rica. Every shiny avenue drew me back in time. Every Ni Hao and smile here became a face I knew somewhere back in the trackless bright snow of memory. Every leaf scent became the burning leave piles of fall in sweet New England, every seed dropped became a reminder of my own growth, every ghost became my own ghost, every migrating bird became my own migrations—so many migrations. I felt every immigrant’s hopeful wings flapping high above their own expectations, the kind of swamp-cooled lava rock, prehistoric hope of nomads, following the seasons, auspicious, gleeful, a summer’s stolen meager harvest measured against the treasons of the coming winter, a wine dance now in abundant autumn, a free-for-all of spirit, a fiery burst before the snow and ice, pulling along with you everything that had previously died as protection, a DNA shawl against your own inner wilderness, gasping. Ah, autumn. Cue the lonely wolf howls. Cue the riotous colors. Cue the blustering winds. Cue the Canadian geese chevrons. Cue the barrels of hard cider. Cue the me in you and the you in me. Cue the longing. Cue it all. Once again. Autumn is . . . the time to remember. This was just an instant in time I was able to capture as I watched the day-glo orange people trying in vain to sweep up the rain . . .
1 Comment
Mary
10/2/2014 05:03:32 am
I love Autumn, crisp weather, apples, cider, pumpkins, mums, leaves showcasing a beautiful masterpiece, sweaters, everyone and everything trying to hold on to the last days of summer before preparing for winter. I like Autumn to last for a long time. We had a great summer weather was beautiful and so is fall. We have not had much rain at all this year seems you are getting it all. I don't miss it thou it has been so fall like all summer really a different season this year. The atmosphere is changing! It is fun to remember in Autumn and so I will too remember!
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