The Collapse CLXXII: Changing Seasons

 03 Oct 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

Fall is in the air.

It has always been indefinable to me, that last moment when one season turns into another. Occasionally abrupt, there are years where the season is something on one day and something else on another day: the day that careens from the cool of Spring to the heat of Summer or contrariwise, the last day of Autumn that suddenly turns to Winter with a quick plunge in temperatures and precipitation that will not end until the following Spring.

But more often than not it remains a soft sort of thing, something that is more perceived than grasped: the tilt of the sun, the sound of the birds, the change in the behavior of plants and animals long before something as noticeable as the weather starts change. Perhaps it is more noticeable to me now as I have a great deal more time to pay attention to it.

The past few days (and the next few) have been consumed with scraping off the last gleanings of Pompeia Paulina’s and Statiera’s garden (now Statiera’s and Young Xerxes’) – a handy thing, to have two gardens to comb through. Pompeia Paulina and I rise, take care of our own chores, and then walk the half mile to their house to work in the garden there as well starting to prepare their house for Winter.

From what I can see, the street they live on remains maybe 75% occupied now, likely from those that have picked up and aggregated at other locations (there have no further deaths that I am aware of). Walking down the street is a somewhat eerie experience, the houses sitting empty and staring as one passes by.

In some ways you would not know that they are empty – after all, in a community which has a combination of year round residents and Summer residents, one becomes used to the fact that some houses always look unlived-in for long portions of the year. And yet there are signs – the local flora that grew up and was never cut back, small maintenance items that would have been attended to in years past but not now, the absence in many driveways of motor vehicles (that now go nowhere of course), the ubiquitous indicator of life in the United States.

There are still noises – we are not the only ones preparing for Winter of course – but it is much less than it would be for this time of year. It is more of a background sense of presence than an active sense of others nearby, the much more quiet sounds of a non-mechanical society punctuate only very occasionally by the sound of an engine performing a task that once was taken for granted.

Young Xerxes and I cut and dig and pull in this silence, passing our yield to Pompeia Paulina and Statiera, who figure out what is to be done with them. Likely today was our last day in the garden; like ours, theirs is now stripped of anything remotely resembling food, their greenhouse (like ours) holding the promise of whatever can be grown in the Spring.

A quick meal with them (black eyed peas, boiled potatoes, and greens) and then Pompeia Paulina and I make the trip back across the streets with their slight cracks that will only get worse with this Winter and the occasional sound of a bird overhead.

In some ways, Lucilius, it is the last dying silence of Autumn before Winter. The fact that it feels like it is last dying silence of a civilization that may very well not be at this level next year haunts my steps as I walk home.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca