Scraps

the world is changing so quickly. the colors, shapes, and especially the light. i’ve not yet grasped the scandinavian light. its still more magical to me than real.  sometimes i find myself entranced by certain shapes. like the rectangle that affixes itself to our kitchen wall on sunny mornings, right over the small impasto painting. such an aqueous light, it looks more like a water tank than anything else. and just below our window, the path that meanders sinuously up the hill toward högalidskyrka. its been salted now that temperatures are falling below zero, and when the sun is released, the path glows up to a neon white, a blinding neon shape that you can’t stare at for too long, just long enough to see it weave into the sky as if a river. or how the shadows of long staircases climb the sides of buildings like ivy, and tiny bodies float diagonally from window to window across the walls. then yesterday, how it bounced between the heads of three older women sitting together at a bus stop laughing too hard to finish their sentences, which was one of the best noises i’ve heard since arriving in sweden, and i stood at the bus stop on the opposite side of the street just to listen to it. laughter spewing from their wide open mouths. it was in their hands too, they slapped it onto their thighs. at some point i became absorbed by the light, already weak at 4 pm, but pushing itself through the trees in long orange slants over the womens’ possessed bodies.  how long have i been watching like this, i wonder when i’ve finally recovered consciousness. it didn’t matter in the summertime. the days were so long, there was time for anything it seemed. but now the days are much shorter, and still shrinking. we begin them earlier and earlier, we have to. the aquarium of light used to hang on our kitchen wall for an hour, but its now vanishing after twenty minutes. soon there will be only dying, dim light and steel gray skies, when the sun will not even finish rising before it has already begun to fall. it teaches you to snatch opportunities with a childlike voracity. to take your work or your coffee or your kids outside when the sun appears, because it may not wait for you to finish what you’re doing, and you don’t know when it will be returning either. you learn to cherish each moment of the day, each ounce of light as if it were the last. i am amazed at how far i’m constantly walking out of my way in order to stay in the sun. nothing ever means as much as when its being lost.

Posted at 1:10pm and tagged with: one column,.