Autumnal notes

My thanks to my brother Marek, who many years ago told me about the Japanese notion of mono no aware, the awareness of the transience of things, the bittersweet sadness at their passing. And to my parents, who early this summer told me (entirely independent of my brother) about the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi, the aesthetic of transience.

It is at this time of year, as summer slowly passes into autumn, that the aesthetic of transience becomes most acutely felt. This morning, the sun rising over the misty fields, highlighting the dew-covered cobwebs of the large garden spiders, engendered just such a klimat.

Before long though, it was warm enough to leave home without a jacket and cycle into work, enjoying the September sunshine. As I cycled in, my thoughts strayed to similar mornings in the London I grew up in. I am very grateful to Jonathan Wood, who archived this e-mail from me (9 September 2003) and sent it back last week:

It's that time of year again. The Japanese claim that the feeling of the earliest intimations of the onset of autumn is the most profound and beautiful that a human can experience. The sense of mortality, of summer fading away, passing by like life itself, manhood, glory... On a day when the sun shines in the morning, but it's getting colder outside; there's dew on the lawn and the leaves on the trees are just starting to lose their green, you can feel it.

The past four days in Warsaw have been just so. Cloudless skies, warm days, cool mornings and evenings, the clear skies letting go the warmth of the earth as soon as sun sets.

Back in London I had my own ritual for the early days of September, which I have observed since the age of 15, when some unknown calling prompted me to take the day off school and board a 112 bus from Ealing Broadway heading anti-clockwise around the North Circular until the bus reached its last stop, by a pub (The Tally Ho!? The Cock, at Palmers Green? The Manor Cottage Tavern?) For some reason, the sensation of the onset of autumn, I felt, is best experienced in north-west London. From Willesden to High Barnet, from Stonebridge Park to Hendon on a sunny day before September becomes too unambiguously autumnal, the sense of Mono No Aware was there; strong and absolute. Year after year I'd go, wandering by bus to Cricklewood, by tube to Finchley Central or Southgate to Cockfosters thence by foot onto Trent Park. Returning to London after four years of Midlands studenthood, I renewed my habit of pilgrimage. Bunking off work for a day, or taking the opportunity to visit a client or supplier with a London NW address, I would never miss the chance to experience Mono No Aware in this particular part of London.

Chance would play an important part in these ramblings; the unexpected second-hand bookshop, a welcoming pub, a quiet park set back from the noisy main road, an interesting architect-ural elevation. There was no sense of taking a map; planning the trip would kill any prospect of serendipitous happenings. Taking a camera was also taboo; these were atmospheres that no 35mm SLR could possibly capture on film; the late warmth of the sun on my face, smells of diesel exhaust on the North Circular, taste of Watney's barley wine, Ponder's End. Thirty years on from the first such excursion, I look back with unabashed nostalgia at London North-West. London the Great, London the Big Onion where layer on top of historical layer exists to be peeled back and explored, away from the business of the outer skin. Today I feel like going somewhere - but where? Warsaw's outskirts are too rural or too post-communist to draw me from my desk...

Since 2003, I've located plenty of magickal places in and around Warsaw where the feeling of the onset of Autumn can be felt, loud and clear... (click label Autumn below).

Time to listen to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, which captures the essence of autumn coming unto England.

The River Thames between Henley and Marlow is also replete with autumnal atmosphere when the sun shines onto riverside trees, their leaves turning red. Another place I'd love to travel out to at this time of year. "Soon, it will be autumn in Buckinghamshire..." There's Vaughan Williams working his spell!