Fade'n
I love foggy mornings. I suppose I would feel differently if I were on a nineteenth-century fishing vessel out on the waters of Lake Michigan (which is also weirdly specific, but I lived by Lake Michigan for four years—those waters are crazy haunted). Fog creates instant atmosphere, transforming mundane scenes into moody, noir film stills. It calms, it stills, it enforces a slower pace. Snow silences the world; fog sighs over it like a lover.
“Lininality” is a concept I learned about in graduate school. It connotes in-betweeness, a place of transition, of getting caught in the midst of being and becoming. I’m reminded of this on foggy days. A walk on a foggy morning takes me twice as long. I make frequent stops to take photos, of course, but also to enjoy feeling estranged from my surroundings. It’s like stumbling around in a dreamscape.
In fifteen or thirty-minutes the fog will lift. The scene will rearrange itself again. And that’s another thing that makes fog precious: it’s fleeting nature. It gives you a moment, leaves you a little suspended like the beat that hovers in the air just before you yell “Surprise!” It feels wonderful to stand in this place for a few minutes, both on this trail that runs along the water and in the metaphorical margins, flirting with possibility, resting in a space where definition drops away in favor of faith of what exists behind the smudges of dark and light.