Because the light started being perfect on Monday morning.
If it was Monday, and if it was the light I remember. Because you know I am always mixing up events and properties, switching them, only it’s not mixing them up exactly, they’re just all equidistant in my memory. But this gentle, sweet light that morning just drew me out.
Light that is harsh you don’t want to view too closely, you stand back at the far wall, clear across the room, and look out the windows from fifteen feet away; this morning in question was just the opposite, with a blanket of fog over the river just thin enough so it could still reflect the pink and gold the sunrise stained the clouds with. More fog in the woods and fields, all full of deer. Sweet, gentle light that brings you across the room of your head until you’re right there, face pressed up against the glass of your eyeballs, not wanting to miss a single detail.
Light that says You must remember every single thing. Paint it if you can or take a picture of it or write it down if you like, but remember every little thing.
When I look at the webcam of the Internet’s biggest camgirl, Mt. St. Helens, I am reminded of the harshness of the light where I grew up, because I grew up just a few miles from that mountain. The light there, in the summers, in my memory, was too bright to look at without squinting and drove me far back into my skull.
No one can paint Greece. Correct me if I’m wrong. The say the light there is perfect, and it is bright and clear and unique, but I’m wondering whether the idea of it being perfect is influenced by it being Greek, as in, Here we are! Greece! Naked beaches! I’m going to try ouzo again, only not get sick this time! But if the light really were perfect, you’d think you could paint it.
Although, that reminds me of one sunrise many years ago: Alpha’s face golden sitting on a dock somewhere on Crete. Not just her face, the rest of my then-girlfriend too: faded blue teeshirt and jeans, long straight blond hair, golden in the sunrise, the most perfect moment I’ve ever seen. Even if I could paint, I’d still leave that image alone. Although, here I am, trying to describe it. We slept on the beach, which was made of stones and filthy with tar, and woke to that sunrise.
Maybe I just have a thing about sunrises, except this light here has been perfect ever since Monday. The sunsets driving home are just as fine, and the light in between as well: right there, face pressed up against my eyeballs is where you’ll find me. Taking it all in.
I am a person fascinated by light as you are. Hub shakes his head at dismay at the many pages in my photo album of blanketing fog, spears of the suns rays through holes in the clouds. Such sightings are what makes life really special when all other events lack lustre. Really enjoyed reading this post. It gave my morning lustre.
The light today is amazing. The fog is just beginning to lift, and the mountain is looming to the north almost glowing through the haze. To the east Mt. Hood primly oversees the hills rolling down to the Willamette.
As I look north my view captures the sparkling blue of the river, the solid dark grey and terracotta of Union Station and the Broadway Bridge, and the lighter greys of various concrete buildings and the I-405 bridge balancing Mt. St. Helens on the horizon. Over the west shoulder of the mountain is another peak, and to the east of it I can see yet another snowcap (Rainier?). There are trees of mostly green but speckled with red and orange as the leaves are just beginning to turn here, and the darker harsher green of the evergreens.
I love Portland.
I like Portland a lot, although the Markham bridge gave me nightmares as a child. I was thinking more of the light on the side of the volcano in August, I suppose.
See Katja’s entry on light:
http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/thieme/archives/008692.html
Thanks, Novala!
that’s such a beautiful memory of your wife you have – i’m sure she knows you love her so much, you gooey sentimentalist, you…
I remember when I first came to Sweden, how fascinated I was by the light and the sky. It’s so clean, the light, in the summer – not sharp, just clean and everlasting. But this time of year, the sun is slipping in the sky and the light starts to shine sideways over the city, and it’s exquisitely soft and melancholy.
Light in Sweden, yes! I remember being amazed at the light when I visited in Summer, as it seemed so different from what I was used to. It was more blue in Sweden, or had some sort of different pure whiteness that was difficult to describe. It seemed much yellower in Australia. Perhaps it’s just my imagination.
Perhaps it will change as winter approaches, but the light in the coast of Oman is harsh and blinding, although it sometimes makes the sea a breathtakingly gorgeous blue-green colour at midday, if you can bear the pain. The sky is rarely truly blue, but an odd brownish-grey-white; no clouds, or perhaps all cloud. Colours are strangled and dulled, even through the darkest sunglasses. Photography has to wait until near sunset or, as today, for the desert dawn.