Endless Transition: Night and Day

There goes the day, below the gaudy sun.  They go, together, quietly sweeping up bits and pieces of lingering questions and half-formed thoughts.  Now comes twilight and then night.  It seems a pity to end in desultory colors a day of such beauty, one that breathed cool whispers, implied passage, and consisted of infinite transition.   
This minute separated from that, one hour from another?  No.  An arc, smooth in soundless flight, invisible to my searching eyes.  I felt time passing, saw it in shadow and glare.

Time is only the rumble-less turn of the earth.  Time is not passing; I am passing, round and round again, riding this jutted and jumbled ball.  Time is light and dark and all their blurring permutations.

Flying past the searchlight of the sun's intensity, daylight changes to night.  Still flying headlong, rushing, the other side of the world is taking its turn from dark to light.  While I sit here, still, just breathing, the headlong rush of the earth goes on and on.  I am swept forth, even as I sit here unmoving, away from the sun and then back into its view again.  It is a fantasia, an escapade, a wonder, this spinning globe and our blazing sun, creating constant transitions of light and dark.

A wall outside, gilded so recently in sunlight is cloaked, darkened, biding its time.  There it is again, the thought of time, of measuring, incrementally subdividing evidence of the turning of the earth.  The earth will round again, and soft colors will emerge from the dark edge of night, and all life will ride on.  That gilded wall once visible through my window reflected the disappearing sun, then yielded to the lavender, gray and fawn of evening twilight and then no color at all.  One infinite span of color, time is all one time, nothing at a standstill, ever.  All is transition, all is change, we are turning, we are always waiting, to see the sun again.  

A Riot of Color

The sun is cooling her heels just now,  set on getting to Hong Kong soon.  I'm on the couch, halfway between vertical and horizontal, debating the merits of staying alert vs draping my carcass over a few pillows and watching TV the rest of the night.  I had a brief idea about getting up and over to Asilomar to wave good-bye to the sun, but, no I'm not going to.  I'll send an email and wish her well.

I saw some surreal color down in my neighbor's yards on my way home today and stopped for a few shots of magenta and gold.  Gorgeous.  Spring is a riot of color, assaulting my eyes at every turn, and I love it.  Mostly, there is a heavy green fullness to the oaks on every hill this year, after the many showers that have soaked way down to the deepest roots of the trees.

It makes it very hard to think of going to work and sitting indoors for eight hours.  Shouldn't I be out in the world instead of locked inside?  Is that what's best for us all?  I think I am always a better version of myself if I can fill my lungs with fresh air and walk for miles out in the world, not cooped inside.  It's a conflict that no one of us has solved for good in any of our modern lives.

Winter Sound

I was thinking about a demonstration of sound editing in films I saw once.  A man wearing a trench coat, a fedora and wingtip shoes was walking along a wet sidewalk.  Leaves lay in loose piles in the gutters, and the colors were of muted tones. The man was looking straight ahead as he walked, and he was moving steadily without deviating to right or left.  His hands were in his pockets.  There was a total absence of sound.

Then, the scene was shown again, but a lilting, sweet song was playing. The mood changed. Here, you thought, was a happy man, perhaps in love, certainly content with life.  It seemed delightful, light and inviting.

The scene played one more time, but this time the sound track was a low, minor-key chord played on cellos and basses with a rising anxious intensity.  Perhaps the man was being followed by a killer or he was angry and violent.  He seemed in imminent danger and dreadfully vulnerable to unseen forces.


I thought about sound today because the day was so gray and color so subdued.  The absence of visual interest shifted my attention to my ears and what they were telling me.  I decided to be "blind" while I walked and thought of the famous ability of people like Ray Charles, Andrea Bocelli and Stevie Wonder to mitigate the loss of vision with wonderfully increased auditory acuity. 

I walked only for a few hundred feet (glancing up to keep my bearings and laughing at my clumsiness) in a rain-soaked environment. Water noises were everywhere.  I thought about the way our minds monitor what we hear, "filing," in a way, the ordinariness of most of them, but still alert for subtle clues that might signal an important change that could be dangerous or interesting to us.  The variety of sounds that indicated the movement of water in the world around me was infinite and virtually indescribable except by a few adjectives we always turn to:  Swish, splash, gurgle, drip, plink, and roar.  Most of the sounds today were tiny and subtle, notable in their infinite variety and exquisite detail, all very surely the sounds made by large and small portions of liquid, moving or being moved. 

I thought about what babies hear in the womb and how the voices and sounds outside, in the room, give them a preliminary introduction to the world to come.  It has been shown that the sound of a beating heart played to a fussy infant will quiet them very quickly.

I listened to the sounds around the pool as I swam later, and knew that visual clues were serving to edit the sounds in my mind.  My arms moving through the water made a very similar sound to that of oar blades pulling through a still lake surface.  If I had been able to focus on listening only to the sound - played in a darkened room for instance - I would probably have been unable to tell what thing was making the gurgling sound.

I remembered the sound of the storm-swept ocean last week and the way the waves sounded as they steamed across the bay:  A variable swishing crescendo that culminated in a booming rumble and then the clatter and crash of rocks rolling up and down the slumped cliff rubble.  The swish was the same as you hear when very fast swimmers race in a pool.  Slower swimmers and slower waves create a different quality of sound, so by just listening to the quality of the noise, you can tell the quality of the swimmer.

I've thought about what perfect pitch might be like for those gifted with it.  I think the cacophony of sounds that are off key must be annoying.  Some musicians have been known to be so intolerant of a poorly tuned piano, or guitar, that they were simply unable to use it.  I don't have perfect pitch, but I have enjoyed good hearing and being able to listen to beautiful sounds; being able to do so has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. 

Today is a visually unlovely one, but the brilliant shadings of noise, even in their tiniest dimension, are everywhere to be heard and appreciated.  At this time of year when the light is low and air cold, tune up your hearing a bit and notice what you're surrounded by.  It's a refreshing alternative that can be very uplifting when sunshine has gone missing for so long.

She's a Breeze

Traveling along the geography of my body, I note that the southern extremities are cool today while the northern are much warmer. I went for a walk at the beach this morning and got my old gray socks wet. Again. So, my feet got cold, too. Not so bad though. Not so bad.

The swell was up - has been up - lately, and the waves made a whomping boom every now and again as a wave hit the sand or bucked up against the rocks or cement ruins here and there. Nothing eventful. Rather, it was peaceful in a swishy sandy way. My shoes came away covered with sand and no matter how much I stomped them afterward on my walk home, the sand stayed put, covering the soles and sides, awaiting an opportunity to finally fall off once I was inside my home.

The summer breeze has been scurrying around busily lately. She's like an old aunt who has gotten past her inhibitions and proprieties and gets a good laugh lifting up skirts, tossing hats and sending napkins sailing. I walked with her yesterday, as a matter of fact, catching her coming into town on errands with her arms full of clouds and mist. She's an odd mixture of grace and whimsy, that old girl is, and I think she gets a laugh out of that.

We sat briefly on a bench downtown.

"Did you see those golfers out there on the ninth fairway?" she giggled. "Oh, I had such a laugh! One of them had himself all set up to swing and I just couldn't resist. I gusted! I love it when I gust! It reminds me of the old days. Oh my..." and her voice trailed off with a little sigh. A flag fluttered on a nearby pole. She looked at it with a distant, unfocused glance, made a shooing motion with her hand. The flag snapped and strained on its clips and the rope pinged against the metal pole. "Oh!" She looked away distractedly, brushed a gray shock of hair off her forehead and stood up briskly. "Let's go!" And we set off downhill again.

In her younger days, she could slip over the tops of hills and down their slopes, ruffling the grasses rather delicately with her fingertips. She would rustle through the tops of willows at the river's edge and have long talks with the sun as they walked together through the day. She was longer legged, it seemed, back in those days, and she was lighter on her feet, a fine dancer. You know, just give her a fine cliff face to whirl off of and she would set the evening off in such refreshing way. Everyone has always admired the summer breeze, especially since she could do just about any small invisible thing and make it look so easy.

But these days, in the middle of June on the coast, with the fog lying around all fat and slothful, she's been a bit out of sorts, and I think she feels like she's losing her grip on the waves. She's from a large family, all eccentric, of course, and she never had children. She's told me a few wild stories about the black sheep in her family, the tornadoes. She suspects they need anger management therapy, and she's staying far away from them. It's for the best, she says. Mostly, she spends her time shooing clouds to the inland valleys.

"You know, I'm thinking of taking some time off for a while, write a memoir or something. I've given it some thought. No one really wants me around right now. The sun and fog are at it again, as usual. He's just gotten so full of himself. It's such a shame!" She put her clouds down on the beach and they ran off to play, pushing the water's surface into tiny wavelets. "If you really want to know," and she leaned toward me conspiratorially, "I think the sun should just blaze, let herself go for a change and teach him a lesson. She's been too diplomatic with him. She told me about the Wagner the wind has been listening to, but he's up north for the season, so I don't expect him around here for a while. It's just the fog that's getting to her. She just needs to blaze!" Her eyes widened with the thought of it, and she smiled quickly. A passing tourist caught her suddenly frisky hat.

She was chatty, smiled a Mona Lisa smile as she called her little clouds back to her for a snack now and again, and waved at the tourists on the recreation trail. I enjoyed her company and wondered if she could convince the sun to blaze again. I asked her to try again and she agreed. She ruffled my hair with her hand, and it felt good.

After a while, we found ourselves silent and simply sitting peacefully on the rocky shoreline, and then both knew it was time to go home, take a nap. We said good-bye and parted for the afternoon, me to walk back home and she to wander out west over the water to watch the gulls and pelicans, give them a lift, help them soar. She lives out there this time of year, reclining at the end of the day with her stockinged feet up. Listen over on Asilomar Beach at the end of the day and you'll hear the puffing breaths of her satisfying sleep, steady and soft in the night.

Greeting the sun again

Lo and behold, the sun came out today! So, I had a conversation with her as she idled overhead.

I was in the garden wrestling with the albuteron and eyeing the spent blooms of my roses when she first appeared. I asked her about her ongoing conflict with the fog and if it bothered her much. She looked a bit peeved when I asked. "That fog is a constant pain in my side," she sniffed. "I give him every opportunity to just be a normal cloud, but, no, he has to roll around on the coast and undo all that I've done all morning long. It's so hard to get good help these days."

The sun wears old crinoline skirts lined with gold and she adds sequins to them now and again, usually after the clouds give up their tantrums and wander off. I personally know that she loves garlic, especially in pesto, smiling more kindly on gardens where it grows. She's a diva. Anyone knows that. But, she has her moments when her confidence crumbles a bit.

I felt her warm caress on my back for the first time in days and told her how good it felt. She smiled with gleaming teeth. I squinted and worked at the weeds at the base of the roses. I asked her if she was planning to be out more this week, if we could expect a bit more warmth than we've been getting. She was glancing at herself in a sliding glass door, checking her pearls, straightening her crown. She touched her gold-gloved fingertip to the corner of her lip and thought for a moment. "Yes, well, I have my plans, but you'll need to see what the wind is up to. I can't control him, you know. He's taken a liking to Wagner again. He gets all worked up over it and just goes wild."

She played with the surface of a little fountain, splashing it, tossing a few glittering diamonds across its surface with a casual throw-away gesture. Then she breathed deeply. Reaching high overhead she stretched her arms grandly. A hesitant wisp of cloud hurried away. The sun idled away to the west, walking slowly, swaying her hips and fluffing her thick blonde hair. One strand fell on her shoulder. She just looked so lovely and fine that I had to smile. Her presence always commands attention even if the wind shows her so little respect. The day was her stage and she knew it.

After my garden chores were done and feeling quite satisfied with the day, I enjoyed the pleasure of sitting in my big blue chair out on the patio for a little while. The diva sun was long gone by then but not forgotten by any stretch of my imagination.