The texture of everything has changed - particularly that of the light - or perhaps more accurately, the darkness. When I pass over the border of Sackville Road to New Church Road it becomes, for some undefined reason, more noticeable.
Out here in the Mews, almost halfway between Hove proper and Portslade, feels like we're in another country entirely.
I walked back from town tonight at twilight. It was one of those amazing dusks that you get only in October. I couldn't see where the sun was - hidden by buildings - but the sky was a mixture of red and violet. An old sky, and deep too.
The roads I passed by as I walked down New Church Road were empty but for the early halos of street lamps, and beyond these pools of weak and mysterious light, swelling pools of night. Each street seemed an avenue into some more mysterious and entrancing reality, the dark geometry of houses passed on rumours of hidden gardens, and I was particularly struck by one point on my walk home.
I'm not sure why. All it was was a waist high light - the kind used to light the borders of driveways. This one was just situated inside the gate of the grounds of a building that looked like -perhaps- some kind of rediential home. A large anonymous building that in the half-light, possessed a dreamy quality to it. The light was situated on a kind of verge between a stone wall that demarcated the grounds of the -possibly residential- house and the tarmac driveway which kind of curved sharply to the right so it ran parallel to New Church Road. This light - a 1970s sandwich spread beige colour - fell onto the ground at it's base. The ground was piled with leaves, obscuring the earth or the grass beneath. A thick skin of cast out fevers. Somehow, this obscure little piece of the walk home seemed to define a certain part of semi-urban autumn, almost like a sigil or an icon in a shrine to the Autumnal Mystery. The air tasted of earth and night-time, sleep, and of listening to wind whilst lying in bed having woken from that sleep.
Black mornings and rain, dark, breezy days.
Sunday night now, an hour or two before too quick sleep.
It's only nearly light in the morning when I wake now.
Summer, as it should, feels far behind us now.
Maybe I should leave an offering at that shrine of Autumnal Mystery, and what gift should I leave to such a shrine? A glance perhaps, as I walk by, a passing recognition of these secret places in plain sight.
As I said, it feels deep in autumn now.
