Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
“When the shadows rise and the path lies hidden, do not despair! For then shall the light pierce the darkness and fall upon its champion, master of dark and light, for he is dark and light, and he shall guide you.”
So concludes today’s reading from “The Book of Boo”.
Normally we don’t get such reddish light filtering into my office as the sun is blocked from view when it is low in the western sky, but smoke from a massive forest fire in the Gorge colored the light before the sun sank behind the trees, softly illuminating the door to my closet.
On Sunday rain and cooler weather arrived for a few days, not only drenching western Oregon with desperately needed rain but helping fire crews deal with the Eagle Creek Fire ravaging the Columbia River Gorge. But the day prior smoke from the fires increased throughout the day in Portland, to the point that I stayed inside and didn’t even let Ellie go out for her evening walk. Late in the day, with the sun colored red by the smoke, I noticed an interesting pattern of shadows on my wall. As I photographed it I looked to my right and saw the Cat Signal on the far wall, a silhouette of Boo atop the cat tree.
I stood upon the dragon and saw its scales glistening in the sun beneath my feet. I was not afraid. That was a mistake.
This light traveled for a hundred million miles to remind me to look up at the wonders above my head, to look down at the wonders beneath my feet, to look out at the wonders before me.
I saw crabs climbing a sandy beach in the shadow of palm trees, even though I knew, with some certainty, that I stood atop a sidewalk beneath large oak trees. And yet it seemed to me dark, though nearly mid-day, as though the sun hid behind the moon. It soon fled, my confusion, and took the darkness with it.
If you’re going to put your sun down on the sidewalk, you have to use a coaster or it’s going to leave a ring! Come on people, this is why you can’t have nice things!
I expected to enjoy the solar eclipse but was surprised by just how much I enjoyed it, even though we didn’t have a total eclipse from where I work in Beaverton. I thought it would get darker than it did given the near totality, but even the little sliver of sun still left plenty of light, even if things did look a little odd. Normally when the light levels are that low, the sun is either low in the sky with warm light and long shadows, or completely out-of-sight with cool light and no shadows. But this morning everything just got dim. I hadn’t read up on the eclipse, thinking that it was just going to get dark, so I was caught off guard by the shadows. I loved both their crescent shape and their hard edges so I spent more time watching the shadows at my feet than the shrinking sun itself, looking for patterns created by the light filtering through the trees.
Thankfully I brought my camera to work even though I wasn’t planning on photographing the eclipse itself, the Sony A6500 camera and Sony Zeiss 16-70mm zoom lens are small enough that I tossed them in my laptop bag this morning just in case there was anything interesting to photograph. So you’ll have to put up with some abstracts of shadows over the coming days, some in deep shadows like this one (the combined crescents reminded me of seabirds flying above the beach) as well as some more open shadows where there is less contrast between light and dark and more warmth in the shadows.
Boolie 