Fall
On a walk with a friend who happens to be a vicar, we had a conversation about the British/American divide over what to call this season. He made some etymological and cultural case for ‘autumn' and I instead gravity. Autumn is for poets and painters and parents. Fall is for pragmatists. Were this simply a matter of naming rights, ‘fall' would win because American corporate advertising can outspend and faces fewer regulations. As a vicar, an expert of the fall, and in his case a man of science who has researched the dying soil underfoot, I was sure he would see sense.
The Big Bang is conceived of as an explosion, the whole of the universe and existence cast racing outward, in terror or delirious embrace of freedom. Of being. But in space, there is no direction. No up, no down. Only proximity and time. From the moment of creation, we have been in freefall.
Space shuttles and satellites in orbit fall around the planet, held there by gravity. The moon, romanticised as a dance partner for lonely Earth, falling around her. Not in love, but a different kind of fall, more powerful. The planets falling around the sun, the solar system falling around the galaxy, the leaves from the tree.
Our lives are conducted no differently than the leaves. We fall, occasionally catching an updraft or spinning a pirouette as the currents of air invigorate a trajectory understood. The colour our bold declaration that we were here before we weren’t.
We are all broken in our own perfectly beautiful and unique constellations of matte stardust, in search of dance partners with and around whom we can pretend gravity doesn’t exist as we fall.
Giri/Haji, which I touched upon the other day, revels in this. Each character has flaws and has done “bad things" or held “bad intentions.” We are prompted to consider whether the notion of being a “bad person” is severable from the doing of “bad things.” Everyone has been let down, and in a desperate effort to restore what has been lost or to find what was never there, each character commits further harm despite intentions to the contrary effect. It’s a masterpiece in a way that real life can never be, gently disclosing the goodness and the badness of us all. The sense of duty that drives us forward and the weight of shame that we bear.
A character, stoned, muses on the peculiarity that everything we are and everything we do is an echo of something that has already happened, or will happen again. It’s a subtlety woven into the events of the story, and we must grapple with the same character’s questioning of whether something matters. Whether it’s important. If we’re just echoes, what was the sound? Does our ringing have value?
I won’t go into any specifics about the plot, as it will be airing for weeks to come, but I encourage you to watch it in the old-fashioned way. No phone. No iPad. I will say that the finale features a sequence that is the most incredible thing I have ever seen in the context of a television programme. It was moving, unexpected, and positively extraordinary.
Despite everything and the chaos that reigns not just in the world of Giri/Haji, but out here in what we suppose to be the real world, it is not without hope. Falling, lost, many of the characters encounter someone who wants to break their fall — even if they don’t know how to respond to grace such as this. To accept this gift requires a vulnerability and openness that is hard to grant, especially as one who has been hurt. As one who has fallen. To be caught.
Autumn is a mood. Fall is a fact. The truth is that we are all broken in our own perfectly beautiful and unique constellations of matte stardust. We’re echoes chasing each other through the darkness of space, dancing. The moments when we find others to dance with are the flickers that keep us warm. We are all falling all the time, hoping to be caught, pretending gravity doesn’t exist.
