At 9:30 this morning, we moved from summer into fall. The shift has made me think about one of Vonnegut’s great inventions, the Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse Five. This race of space-aliens teaches the novel’s traumatized protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, to understand time very differently than humans usually do. For the Tralfamadorians—who look like toilet plungers with an eye at the top (!)—all times coexist at once. They see time like a mountain range rather than a succession of moments; the future is as immutable as the past. And whatever choice you need to make now, it’s already been made.
This is a soothing perspective to Billy Pilgrim, who’s been traumatized and re-traumatized throughout his life: by his childhood, the firebombing of Dresden, an airplane crash, the death of his wife. Late in the novel, Billy tells us—cheerfully—that he’s already seen how he’s going to die. He says that, right before his death by a sniper’s bullet, he’ll remind his audience not to mourn him. Instead, they should remember two of the Tralfamadorian’s favorite phrases, “So it goes” (a phrase that has justly entered ordinary speech) and the less-well-known “farewell, hello, farewell, hello.” In Billy’s view, he’ll be dead (“violet light and a hum”), but at the same time he will also be an elderly widower, a ridiculous young soldier in WWII, a wealthy eye-doctor, and a boy at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Farewell, hello, farewell, hello seems to me a useful phrase to ponder as we slip into fall and mourn the passing of The Notorious RBG. There are big changes coming, and also small ones. Some of the changes we’ll mourn; others we’ll be glad to see the back of. Some of the new things coming our way we will welcome with open arms; others will be like a blow to the heart.
Here are a few of mine.
Bye-bye to things I will happily see disappear in the rearview mirror. The long, hot, allergy-ridden summer of 2020 (no big gatherings of friends around the barbeque, no trip to Nova Scotia). My cold, which is fading but not gone. Our current President (cross our fingers).
Farewell to things I mourn: The great Ruth Bader Ginsberg (and, with her, maybe Roe v. Wade). Nearly 200,000 people lost to Covid. Eating outdoors at restaurants (occasionally). Drinks before dinner on the back terrace. And, trivially, the word fewer (for anything that can be counted, which has been replaced by the word less, which is supposed to be used for things than can’t be counted).
Hello to things that will irritate me. Leaves falling off the trees (gorgeous as they fall, sad as they get wet and slick underfoot). Crazy numbers of emails each day about the election (already happening). A return to Zoom-tails and Zoom-talks instead of the much nicer ritual of lunches or drinks on friends’ decks. The installation of a new and very conservative Supreme Court Justice. Darkness arriving earlier and earlier, with the concomitant need for my full-spectrum light every day.
Hello to things I welcome. Crisp fall air. The possibility of a new President and Senate. (Let’s get this election done and won. The real work will begin then, but we will be able to breathe a sigh of relief.) Apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie. Classes (none to teach this fall, but four to take: Italian conversation, exercise, the novels of E M Forster, the Tao Te Ching–all on Zoom, of course. Am I overdoing it? Maybe, but I need a shot in the arm.) Reading in an armchair, with a fire blazing in the fireplace.
It’s autumn. It’s the nature of change, the nature of life. We say farewell, hello, farewell, hello.