What drives that essay isn’t so much White’s sense of the endless tasks and duties that have piled up. It’s the knowledge of October. Every warm day, every day without rain or a killing frost, feels like an opportunity stolen from harder weather. And in the opportunity of a warm October day you suddenly feel the somber pressure of the coming season. White never says it, but “Memorandum” is about the pleasure of not doing the things that need to be done. He is talking about resisting October by refusing to think of it as the foreword to winter.