In autumn, the sun and objects appear to have a different color, the clouds a different shape, the air a different savor. It seems as if the whole of nature had a tone, a countenance that belongs to this season alone, which is more distinct and sharper than in the others, even regarding objects that hardly change in their substance.
— Leopardi, Zibaldone
I come not to praise summer, but to bury it deep, deep under a carpet of leaves. Leopardi’s right: edges harden, flavors bite, the world seems newly legible. Some evenings the air itself takes on a pink-red glow — as if light had been steeped in crabapples — something I swear I see but can never catch on a camera, a color that exists only at the corner of attention.