Milky Light
The Joys of Not Quite Seeing
"White paint is my marble," —Cy Twombly
“A gray day provides the best light.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci
It started yesterday from just a few skitterings from the nothing blue-white sky. Then this wild democracy of flakes. Safely inside and watching the extreme heat of the Australian Open I am okay. Unthreatened I’m lucky to see the inspiration in this whiteout. And anyway its less the snow and more the blurring that I have been thinking about. All sorts of fogginess.
A day where you can barely see in front of you says look harder. Haze doesn’t just cover over it also blurs hierarchy gently erasing the binaries of light and dark. Its soft invitation is the peace of not quite knowing. It is winter thick with fog. You rub your eyes, shiver, look closer. You are alive in this looking. But you won’t quite get it. Nothing is going to be illuminated in this luminous grey. This sort of dustiness has no end-state it is all becoming. Chalk with it millions years of sleeping sea-shelled creatures compacted into glittering white does this. Dusty hazy watery inks do this. A day without a skyline offers this. This gift.
