Heroes Not Zombies

I stepped outside to open the shutters this morning and was stopped in my tracks by the fog. Yes, of course, I SAW the fog when I opened the door, but it was the SOUND of the fog which stopped me.

I stood there and thought “Is this Sunday?” (It isn’t, it’s Tuesday), because in this part of the world, sundays have a very particular sound – a sound of silence. But this was different. It was like the sound of snow. Except it wasn’t. When you stand outside in the snow the world has a distinct quality of silence. A kind of muffled silence. This silence was different from that. It wasn’t a silence which muffles, it was a silence which made the world clearer.

How can a silence, a fog, make the world clearer?

I didn’t have an answer to that question so I did what I usually do. I got my camera and took a couple of photos. Don’t the vines look like dancers in this photograph? Doesn’t the grass look richly green? The fog brings the foreground closer. Ah, yes, maybe that’s the answer. By hiding the distance with a veil, the fog has concentrated my attention on the near. The here. The now. The present.

I listened for a few moments. Nothing. Silence. No wind, no rustling of leaves. Then the sound of a pigeon with its squeaky wings flapping above me. But I couldn’t see it. Silence again. Then out of nowhere a flock of maybe thirty or so starlings, rushing from one tree I couldn’t see to another. A sudden appearance, as if from nowhere, and gone again in a second, to nowhere else.

I peered over the fence and thought I could see a solitary bird perched on one of the vines. I zoomed in my camera lens and saw it was this –

A few late leaves, still standing strong, reaching upwards to a sun we couldn’t see. (“We” being the leaves, the vines and me) Isn’t there something strangely beautiful about such a view? The lack of detail makes the details which I can see even more powerful. Not vivid. But powerful.

Oh, what a delight. What a blessing.

Thank you, Fog, for this intensity, for this moment which made me feel so alive, so filled with the delight and wonder of the sounds, the sights, the scents, the coolness, of here and now – what a present!