See how unbothered these girls are, moseying to their milking! Traffic jam, Azores-style … five minutes for me, while driving, to unhurry myself as they shamble – confident, casual – along a known road to the ritual afternoon appointment.
If there were previous lives, I would have been a cat – cold water, ugh! If future ones, perhaps a life of contentment munching sweet grass with my cow-sisters?
For now, I’m human. And I live on an island where the clouds come down, soft and wet, and – because my species’ instincts are subdued – blurring destination. The fog’s chill startles, while giving no clue to the meaning of the visitation. Is there any?
A poem I love by Iowa-born Amy Clampitt (1920-1994), titled ‘Fog’, features the New England coast, but she could as well have written it about our cliffs and shores: ‘A vagueness comes over everything, / as though proving color and contour / alike dispensable: the lighthouse / extinct, the islands’ spruce-tips / drunk up like milk in the / universal emulsion; houses / reverting into the lost / and forgotten; granite / subsumed, a rumor / in a mumble of ocean.’
Her descriptions of both process and detail are uncannily similar to images of my mid-Atlantic locality: on this one Earth, the phenomenon of fog is an experience that is – I pick out her word – ‘universal’. I remember encountering its family likeness in the place I lived previously, on the UK’s Suffolk seaboard.
The American poet goes on to demonstrate how scaled-down sight accentuates touch and sound. In context, surrendering to these underappreciated pleasure zones, and orientating ourselves by our other senses, may be the only feasible approach. And practically it may be wisest, having ascertained our position, to stay put until what she calls the ‘opacity’ dissolves.
All this speaks of a physical journey. But what of the psychic fog of difficult decisions? Not much asked of cows other than to breathe and stomp in the fields: whereas our lives as people, individually and internationally, seem to get more complicated by the day.
Balancing mid-way through the first draft of a novel, I rate author EL Doctorow’s famous quote: ‘Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ Neither a pantser (flying-by-the-seat-of …) nor plotter, I have a story outline the length of this blog, know where I want to arrive in due course. But to traverse the intervening territory I must beat a path. It’s a metaphor and learning curve for the whole of life.
So, how do I do that? And keep my head and my peace in the process? Research thoroughly, follow my gut, compare lists of pros and cons? These sound excellent techniques – when travelling on a clear day.
A phrase I scribbled down from a blessing by Irish poet, priest, and philosopher John O’Donohue (1956-2008), ‘For A New Beginning’, defines the goal for my state of being. He urges, ‘learn to find ease in risk’; and in the fog, if I’m to have any future at all, that’s what I have to do.
The New Testament also reminds me: ‘We walk by faith, not by sight.’ So, if we each do what our God-given mind concludes is right, listen to all that our conscience tells us, and uncover our intuition in the depths of self where the Spirit of God and our soul shake hands – we may just take the right next step. And one good move will lead to another.
During the richly coloured season of autumn in the UK, around the time of Hallowe’en (31st October), All Saints’ Day (1st November), and All Souls’ Day (2nd November), it is easy to imagine the customary mists do indeed denote thin places where the spiritual and material worlds collide. What I’m reaching for here, by analogy, is: amid uncertain circumstances that demand we choose, there’s something about fog that draws and expands us because it demands our trust.
The construction of this very post is an enactment: starting with a mere feeling at the edge of my consciousness as I contemplated the photo I’d taken; letting it speak to me, interrogating what my subject matter suggests; inviting literary companions to share their insights; stitching between outer and inner journeys to make sense of both.
No matter how sure we try to be, I don’t think there’s any substitute for this. Driving through fog – literal or metaphorical – is a trust game.
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