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28 January 2002 (Monday): beyond the veil

There were clouds dominating the sky on my morning commute, storm clouds, enormous vapor-sculptures in all kinds of colors: dazzling white and frowning gray, and that eerie silver that white becomes when painted against a dark horizon. They looked the way I think gods should look...inhuman, majestic things, both powerful and elusive. Last night they left snow on the foothills and imbued the pavement with the intimate scent of rainfall; this morning they made a miracle out of sunlight and patches of blue sky. Driving to work was sheer pleasure.

All right. That's enough rhapsodic adjectives for today.

For all my fond writing about scenery and music and so forth, I've always suspected that I don't feel things as deeply as some people do. It's true of everything artistic that crosses my path: Hemingway's novels, Beethoven's symphonies, a really good marinara sauce, beach sand beneath my toes. There's always a part of me that believes I don't quite get it, that there's more to it than I'll ever know and I'm just scratching the surface of this immense beauty. It's a suspicion that my senses are dulled, or maybe were never fully developed, and that everything I perceive is somehow fainter than it really is. I try not to let it bother me. What I do experience is amazing enough. But there's always that voice: So much lies beyond the veil. If only you would open yourself to it...

posted by enjelani @ 10:03 PM PST