Night

Sometimes, I feel like I only truly live at night. 

Normally, I recall this in the context of some sort of intellectual labor, whether translation or essay writing. It is as if my mind suddenly opens up, and the words just flow. Tonight, however, this reminder came in a physical way, as I cruised through my mile-long front crawl swim (and then some) without the need to stop.

By then, still a fragile crescent set amidst the purple clouds, the barely-there Moon in Capricorn had already traveled through most of the Sky, reclining further and further into incoming Darkness as if to go to sleep, while turning more and more yellow.

This evening, it was I that was the night owl, and the Moon, paradoxically--a lark.

Yes, that aspen was watching.

The Woods (Mobile), I

I am in the woods.

I am in the woods with no electricity or running water after dark. That alone makes this worth experiencing.

Of course, we are in a cabin, and our devices are charged. Yet I feel like I've taken a small step into the kind of a sustainable world that I've been reading about, even if only for a weekend.

I dislike that term, "sustainable," because it is overused by urban bureaucrats who have not even set foot in a place like this.

It IS accurate.

So is "survivalist," though the latter generates nightmarish visions in the minds of gated suburbanites featuring bearded men in "lumberjack" shirts with hunting rifles, who, gasp!, obtain their own food, rather than relying on factory-farmed, overprocessed "mystery meat."

After the generators were turned off, I grabbed a lantern and my tripod. The night sky looked clear enough for photographic experimentation, and the rising, still-full Moon offered an ethereal greeting through the pines.

This is a well-known bear area, and I must admit that this word crossed my mind on a number of occasions. After all, apart from the green light of my Pentax and the rather weak lantern, I stood in complete darkness.

And out of that darkness, several horses charged at me, talking to each other in worried voices. They stopped, abruptly, feet away from me, then made a ninety-degree turn and continued running, talking, running...

All I could think was that they've somehow gotten loose and took off because something spooked them.

I decided to pack things up.

Those politicians? THIS is the kind of Nature they should experience, wild, awe-inspiring, and with the perception of danger lurking not too far behind.

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Black Metal in Color

Evening mountains: things you'll see here will always differ.

Sometimes, the changes are barely noticeable, other times--enormous. Heraclitus spoke of never stepping into the same river twice.

I speak of the mountains, and let them speak.

I rarely call myself an "artist": illustrator, photographer, and mostly graphic designer--yes. "Artist," much like "art," however, is one of those terms, which was blown up by Postmodernity, instantly piercing its intended meaning with shards of explosive debris and burying the rest under ashes.

It is still there, somewhere. 

Art is something sacred.

Yes, I rarely call myself an "artist," but tonight I'll make an immodest exception. This "Black Metal in Color," I think, comes close: 

Night

Night is my most productive time.  

For several years, I went to grad school during the day and worked in late evenings. Staying up late was a necessity.

I've graduated, but my schedule has not changed much.

And it is on days like this that I realize just how late it is: the Moon has already set, and I'm still awake, text-editing.

For a while, it looked yellow with a noticeable tint of red. Yet not menacing. More like a piece of cheese that fell out of the crow's mouth in Aesop's fables.

Or, better yet, the Krylov version. 

Recurrent Night

It's a stormy, moonless, starless Saturday night in the prairies.

Autumn doesn't start until the Equinox, but the cool air the rain brought along sure smells like it. 

It was that kind of a night--1,500 kilometers away--a month ago. And it was then that I wrote about listening to the calming sound of raindrops outside, which acted as an additional instrument to a musical recording. 

Rocky-mountain sunset.

Two nights conflate into a self-aware déjà vu, only this time around I'm only listening to the rain. But this night's eternal return also reminds me that the lady to whom I previously referred as my "Japanese mother" condensed that particular blog to a single line:

月もなく　星もなき夜は　ひとり聞く　雨音にロックのリフが重なるを

I cannot be a judge of poetry outside of Russian and English. Yet apart from being surprised that my observations are worth translating--and truly impressed by the effort--I realize that I need to be less verbose! 

 

Night

A blood-red ribbon of a sunset wove through the trees on the horizon, but was barely detectable through the camera. This is how the new Moon--in Cancer--announced its arrival.

Women know these things.

Soon, darkness shrouded the mountains, though patchy clouds remained visible long after the Sun disappeared.

And for the first time in a long time, I've decided to do a bit of studying at a reasonable hour--a glass of red wine in hand (deeper, though more muted than the sunset)--but even my textbook told me of the Moon.

The latter chose to remain concealed. 

For now.