A little note from me before we get to this week’s post. First of all, it’s been a long time! A three-week trip back to the U.K. had me making the most of every precious moment with friends and family and kept me (happily) from my laptop. But I missed you and this column/epistle/web-home. In my time away from it, it became clear that the initial intention behind “The Sunday Supplement” had quite quickly and naturally fallen away and been replaced by something with a slightly different tone and character. I hereby formally welcome you, therefore, to the newly renamed, Letters from Los Angeles.
And now, we return to our scheduled programming…
It’s officially Fall here in Los Angeles, and despite what they say about this city not having seasons, there’s a palpable change in the quality of light of late. It’s a peculiar feeling, this subtle turning, very different from the onset of Autumn in the U.K., with its sudden chill against the cheeks, and the crunch of leaf litter underfoot. It’ll be twenty-eight degrees Celsius on Wednesday, arguably equal to an English Summer’s day, yet there’s a discernable sense of it being “no longer Summer”. There’s a certain melancholy to it, the feeling that even though it’s warm enough to go to the beach, that doing so would feel a little flat, like staying at a party just a little too long—you can’t put your finger on exactly when you should have left, you just know that the peak has passed. At the same time, the sudden onslaught of pumpkin-themed décor and pumpkin-spiced beverages seems somehow fraudulent, like Hollywood is playing at it being Autumn when it clearly is not. I vividly remember accompanying my children on a preschool field trip to a pumpkin patch deep in the valley where temperatures crested one hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit, and we cowered beneath sunhats as we sweated our way round the hay wagon ride while a hairdryer-hot wind blew straw and dust in our eyes. After selecting our pumpkins, we bought popsicles on the way out and ate them in the car with the AC blasting.
It’s incongruencies like these that can make living here feel like one giant game of let’s pretend—from the fake Tuscan houses, to the heavy holiday meals designed for colder climates, to the place names borrowed from the Old World—there’s the constant underlying feeling of being in a place without its own authentic identity, a movie-set recreation of a true original. It’s a product of colonialism of course, and there are doubtless indigenous traditions, foods, and customs for this time of year in this part of the country that would be in natural harmony with the weather. But there’s something disquieting about being sold “fall leaf” shaped potato chips at the supermarket when you can see palm trees against blue skies out the window. I want to believe, I want to get on board with the enthusiasm, with the “Fall spirit” if you will, but in buying such seasonally themed foods here I have the feeling that I am Winston Smith, and Trader Joe’s is The Party, holding up four fingers and telling me there are five.
I can empathize, however, I understand how it happens. My body has its own internal season clock, and last week it prompted me to start making soup despite the fact that I no longer live in a climate where soup in September makes any kind of sense. It’s soup o’clock, and it’s also hot chocolate o’clock, and I shall be consuming large quantities of both throughout the coming weeks of sweltering heat—it often gets even hotter in October when the Santa Ana winds blow into town—until at some point there will come a cool and perhaps even rainy day, and I will once again be in harmony with my surroundings. For a short time, sweaters will make sense, the heating will get switched on, and I will experience something I recognize as Autumn. At which point the supermarkets will be full of eggnog, the holiday music blaring, and vacant lots filled with Noble firs raising their silvery-green needles up to the blazing desert sun.
Lovely! Yes, definitely autumn here now. Occasional gales blowing leaves and lichen off the trees, and ice on the windscreen yesterday morning.