Inexpressible light

Dog and man

Two more photos from Thursday afternoon, between Newmarket and Lindsay, Ontario.

From "Sure on this shining night" by Samuel Barber, words by James Agee:

Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.

~~~~~~~~~~

It must have been one of the clearest days of my life. The colours seemed all wrong, the sky too blue. I visited Lake Louise, British Columbia, on a bright day in winter 1980; at that altitude the sky tends toward black. You can see it from a high-flying jet, too. Here the blue was simply blue, but too pure to bear. The dusted snow surface lay purple. Drifts coruscated white more radiant than the gap of heaven, the blazing eye that opens in dreams. Footprints and snowmobile laid trails of ice fire. As the light eased down, those snow colours softened to pink. We watched the sun sink molten orange in a vermilion sea. It left the eastern sky in rose and ash, remnants of a day burned fiercely.

If I could have only three hours to live, those might have been enough to understand beauty—to learn that one may be alone and yet filled. Beneath the marvel of creation the helpless mirror of my spirit cries out. One does not need an answer or a god in order to experience awe and humility.

Postmodernism calls to question notions of art and beauty. It must be blind and deaf.

The cosmos is beautiful. We are a part of it. Our consciousness explores and responds through art. Transcendence is unnecessary. Standing on the bare earth, we have arrived.

When I die, do not look for my spirit in the pages of books I have written or the lives of my children. Those are only a memory. I do not crave reincarnation or immortality. It is enough to know my dust will fly between the breast of languid hills and excruciating reality of inexpressible light. My voice will join the music of wind across wires, drops of water embracing the stream, wrath of fire in storm and stars.