October 2, 2004

• The Pink Fog

  About
  27 hours ago, around sunset on Thursday, while taking a break from
  working in the back of the house, I looked out the front window. 
  The scene had gone from the expected dreary/gloomy gray (about a day
  and a half of rain turning a few inches of snow into slush) to eerie
  and pink.  The pink, of course, was from the setting sun. 
  The eeriness was the fog.

  The
  line of trees just across the road from our place (on the left in the
  first photo) was visible, but the trees on the other side of the muskeg
  beyond that row of trees had all but disappeared into the fog. 

  The camera’s eye sees things differently than I do.  When I got
  out there last night with the camera, I thought I’d missed the pink
  light.  Once out there, what appeared to me was just a
  monochromatic gray scene except for some touches of green in leaves
  that hadn’t fallen yet.  The second shot here, on the right, shows
  trees across the muskeg that I couldn’t see for the fog last night.

  I took some pictures anyway, and when I got back in the house and
  looked out again, it looked pink again out there.  Still, I didn’t
  suppose I’d gotten any shots worth showing, so I wasn’t in any hurry to
  save them or look at them.  I remembered them tonight while
  waiting for my late snack (oatmeal) to cook.  They look like
  something I could have gotten with black and white film and a red
  filter.  I took them with my little Kodak digital, no filter, with
  the white balance set on daylight.

  I’d
  gone out there without a jacket, hat or gloves, and it wasn’t
  uncomfortable.  The temp stayed above freezing all day yesterday
  and through last night.  It got up to around fifty fahrenheit
  today after the fog burned off.  I said it wasn’t uncomfortable
  out there last night.  I mean it didn’t feel especially
  cold.  The air was moist and pleasant, not winter-dry and
  biting.  But it was GRAY… gloomy enough that the lights in our
  windows were quite attractive and appealing when I turned back toward
  home.

  The white light from a side window, showing through the trees in the
  shot to the left (the window is the yellowish light right of center;
  the white patch just to the right of it is snow on top of the oil tank)
  is the lamp on my work table beside the computer desk.  I’d be
  looking out that window now if it weren’t so dark out there all I’m
  seeing is interior lights reflected off the window.

  The
  yellow light in the front window at right here is a hanging lamp over
  “Greyfox’s chair,” the chair at the foot of my bed, facing the
  TV/VCR.  That’s the Old Fart’s CRT of choice, and Doug and I
  rotate between the monitor here and the big old TV at the foot end of
  Couch Potato Heaven, on which the PS2 is located.

  Funny thing –  while I’ve been working in the back of the house,
  I’ve been listening to the radio a lot.  The political ads on my
  favorite jazz station were making me sick, so I tuned in public radio
  and have been listening to a lot of talk.  All the talk about TV
  has me reconsidering my earlier decision to leave the broken antenna
  wire as is.  Yeah, and now and then I also think about doing
  dope.  Once a junkie, always a junkie.

  

  • 3:52 am
  • 6 Comments