Organized Noise

Three days before Halloween, and I was ill, just out of the hospital where I'd watched them carry a black-shrouded corpse past my door. 

You've got to keep an eye on that line between life and death, you know, it can be thin and wily and move faster than you'd bargained for.

The shapes in the security monitor are little more than organized noise, but the one in front is surely me, a violet shadow over my eyes, beyond a veil of a different sort.

The Doorway to Autumn

Last Monday, as I was standing on the corner waiting for the harvest moon to rise, an otherworldly feeling began to settle over our street. You know the kind of thing. A sense of whispers just out of the range of hearing, the feeling that a door has opened somewhere.

Ah, I thought, the spirit of Autumn moves across the land.

Before long, my spouse drove past on his way to an errand. He rolled down his window and asked - looking very puzzled - if here had been a dog with me just a moment before. I said "no, why do you ask?" He said, "because I could have sworn I saw Bambi standing right next to you."

Bambi, our dog who passed away in August.

I like to think she had come through the doorway to Autumn and stayed with me to watch the moonrise.

Carnivalia

 It's county fair and carnival time again - at the proper time of year, not Winter, like Victoria (seriously, Victoria,WTF?) No, it's after a long hot summer that communities traditionally gather to judge each other's vegetables, sheep and pies. Also to blow wads of cash on midway games.

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After visiting the petting zoo and the art display (where my son took home first prize - congratulations L.!) we rushed to hit our favorite part, the carnival.

One may reasonably wonder why, at my advanced age, I'm still enamored of thrill rides. Well, there's no instantly transformative experience like defying gravity. The moment I think I'm too old for carnival rides will be the moment I'm officially no fun any more. You might as well pack it in.

Anyway, it's hard to be miserable when you're whirling around in a giant teacup.

I do love carnivals for other reasons though, something more Bradbury-esque.  Just at the time when the year begins to wind down, this strange, transient world appears under cover of darkness. It's all light and color and noise, when the day before it was only dusty ground. It's like a portal of sorts, into something most unusual.

And even if you aren't trapped forever, the mirror maze will force you to confront your mortal image...

at the end of September, when the veil between worlds grows thin.

The Thinning Of the Veil

Leaving aside my ramblings on memory for the moment, because it's difficult and I'm stuck, let us take a different path for the moment. 

During our walk this evening, I pointed out something that I thought was fairly silly, but felt was worth mentioning nonetheless

"It's one of those nights when things look a bit strange. The landscape looks different. Kind of fairytale-ish. At least that's what I used to think when I was small."
"Yes", says my mate. "it does that sometimes. Takes on a different character. Reminds me of The Wind in The Willows, or something of that nature."

I was surprised by this, thinking it had been my own imagination. There's nothing very fairytale-like about the place we live. There are no lush meadows or babbling streams. Instead, we have rocks and cacti and dense underbrush with thorns. Plus withering heat. Not exactly the stuff of fantasy.

We talked about it on the way home, why the landscape would suddenly seem to change its character on some days, but not others, not most of the time. Maybe it was weather conditions, or the evening sun reflecting on the rocks. Who knew? Mostly, we thought it felt mysterious. Secretive, almost. Secretive? Wasn't that just personifying the landscape? Whatever, it felt secretive. And anticipatory. Like it was waiting for something. But waiting for what?

I told him that in my youth, I'd stay up late on nights like these, waiting for that thing that felt like it was going to happen, but it never came. Meanwhile, the dog was going uncharacteristically nuts, trying to escape her lead, as if she could feel it too.

I pulled out my camera and a took some snaps, as ever trying to capture something I could only feel.

 The pictures did look different from the hundreds I'd taken before - during the night, during the daytime, at all hours of the exact same places - though why, I can't say.

The sky was turning pink with sunset and the dog was whining after something we couldn't see. A doe and her fawns came right up and stared at us, almost close enough to touch. The spirit of the wild was afoot, maybe. Or it was one of those times, as they say, when they veil between worlds becomes thin.

Whatever it was, we decided to leave it to itself and went home to dinner.