Sunshine takes on a different quality in autumn, is what I decided as I walked along the beach tonight. It’s like looking at it through a filter. It’s not good or bad, just different, changed. Change seems to be the theme for autumn in general, at least for me. Every year, autumn takes on this almost surreal neither-here-nor-there quality. It’s like the world is in an adjustment period, slowly finding its feet again. It can’t make up it’s mind on whether to be sunny and warm, windy or icy cold. Like a giant spring clean, autumn throws things up in the air for a little while, before they slowly come down and settle. The leaves are only a part of this, but they do encapsulate that sense of blustering, billowing change.

It was 28 degrees in Melbourne today. Nearly a month into autumn, and it was practically as warm as a hot day in spring. Except it was autumn. I went to the beach to walk tonight, and something about the atmosphere there — all laid back, relaxed and packed with people — made me want to capture the fleetingness of the moment. It was 28 degrees today, but who knows what tomorrow may bring? Autumn is that unpredictable friend who forgets your birthday then shows up unexpectedly with a bouquet of your favourite flowers just because ‘she was thinking of you.’

I don’t think I was the only one trying to hang on to those last rays of sunshine at the beach tonight. Looking around through my tinted sunglasses and through the beat of the music pumping in my ears, everyone seemed to have been pulled there for similar reasons. It felt like we all wanted to hold onto those rays, preserve them in a jar until we were blessed with it again. It was beautiful, but also strangely nostalgic. Autumn itself is exactly that — beautiful and nostalgic. Maybe that’s the lens through which I was viewing it. Fleeting sunshine. Beauty. Impermanence. There’s that theme again.

I left the beach, walked back to my car. Slid off my sunglasses, unplugged my music, car lights on. And as I  drove home I half wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was just me reflecting what I was feeling onto the scene? Maybe nobody there was paying too much attention to the disappearing sun, to those dark silhouettes that make for such great photos? Maybe they were all there simply because it was nice weather. I guess I’ll never know.

But I do know that it was real to me. It was real because I was experiencing it. And I also know that I wish, maybe more than all those people combined, that the sun wouldn’t gently fade away, slipping into the horizon. I wish it didn’t have to be so fleeting.

But if it wasn’t so fleeting, would it be so beautiful? I wonder.