Autumn Light

  By Pico Iyer

My Rating - 5/5 stars

Autumn is a season of change, of the beginning of decay - a season when the earth takes on a different hue for a little while before embracing the slumber of icy winter days. A season when the otherwise hurried life seems to slow down. 

The days move languidly, to soak in the exhilaration of those swiftly flown by. To linger a little more on the miracles of everyday life, on the paling light which  bestows the earth with a mellow exquisiteness. 

It’s amazing how our lives turn around in our autumn years and stare at us from the cracks of our past. How it forces us to move slowly and to stop more often to look about carefully - to acknowledge the transient ilk of our bodies used to the idea of corporal invincibility of heady youthful days. To perhaps cherish what it still has to offer while accepting the fleeting inevitability of time.

I sometimes wonder if we were to be consistently aware of the impermanence of things that surround us, would that have a bearing on our interactions with others. In particular, with our loved ones. Would we be more perceptive and considerate than we usually are while holding their presence and taking their support for granted.

In observing the life around him, after the death of his wife Hiroko’s father, Iyer tries to explore what keeps a family together as the relationships age, what gives it meaning. He wonders How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying. How to see the world as it is, yet find light within that truth.

Like autumn days, his pen moves slowly, capturing the elements of a culture which worships its dead and holds onto the familial in face of everything.

Sometimes his sentences made me stop and then go back to absorb the beauty implied in their meaning. Sometimes I just turned an observer, looking at his life from afar. As someone who herself stands waiting for the autumn light to descend.