The birds fly south across the sky; the sky grows sharp, the wind sweeps over this open field. It’s colder now, the perspiration on your brow evaporates; the green around you drains away, down to yellow, grey and brown…
And as you walk along the streets at night, gusts of red leaves and rain shine in the passing headlights, and you pull your collar up around your neck against the wind…
This is October, the beginning of Autumn in North America and Europe.
It’s not just a change of season. It’s a change of feeling, tempo and appearance; suddenly everything looks different, feels different, and everyone acts differently.
The year is dying, but the world comes to life again. Kids are busy, back in school. The concert season opens, fashion shows display new styles, families begin to think about Christmas and the new year on the way. After the miasmic heat and haze of summer, the cold wind is an invigorating relief.
Here in Dumaguete there are no seasons. It’s always summer- or so it seems to those from distant Northern places like Ohio or Minnesota. The days are similar all year long and always hot. When the temperature here falls to 24 degrees, people frown and shiver with cold and put on jackets. For foreigners, it’s hardly a noticeable change – it’s just a little cooler, a little pleasanter. But that’s why people from the North move South.
Children can sled and play in snow, adults can ski, but after a certain age, the deep cold of winter is lonely and painful to endure. Here, you can sit on a beach or on a shaded veranda, sipping cool drinks, surrounded by smiling young faces, and listen to radio reports of lethal cold and massive blizzards in your native land, far away.
And you can find companionship, a pleasant home, a stable life you can afford to live without change from day to day, year to year, unthreatened by the problems of the world around you- lying in the hot sun.
But when October comes, and you wipe your wet brow with a damp cloth, some scene like this- an open field in the autumn wind, full of life and change- will bite inside your memory.
And you will know- that whatever you may gain by where you go, you will always pay a price for what you left behind.
