Fog

The last week we have had a rather impressively persistent amount of pretty thick fog. We live down the street from a lake and the fog really adds a touch of beauty and mystery to the waterfront drive and the hills. Everything looks like a soft watercolour with vague charcoal outlines. It is of course annoying to drive in the mist early in the morning and late at night, and this time around the fog has been hanging around all day. It makes everything eerily quiet. I have mixed feelings about fog. A cousin of mine only in her twenties, was killed in a car accident on a very foggy night. I always think of her whenever the fog gets very thick. Fog is so imprecise in all its potential to be very dangerous. It is imprecise, period. I think that is why it is unnerving, we can't see its intentions, its dimensions, it deceives us visually, gives us the illusion of outlines, of perspective. It is a reminder of how little control we have over our lives, when all is said and done. We like to understand things, have insight, have depth and visibility. Fog mocks all that. It erases certainty. Now, if you want to hide or have to hide, fog is a great ally. We also like mist- ery, right? Mystery can be charming, thrilling, seductive, hypnotic, it give us the idea that we are walking into a world previously unknown. That evasive quality can of course, backfire, as many a movie or book about mysterious adventures tend to deal with multiple complications and disillusionments. Of course, in the books and in Hollywood, the problems tend to get resolved rather nicely, or, they turn into well explained horrible endings and tragic disasters. But in real life, walking through the fog rarely leads to a treasure chest, or fountain of youth or an ending that brings closure and a clear answer. At best, it leads us down the wrong road , delays our schedule, annoys our straining eyes, or gets us in a wreck or near wreck. Fog hides things, changes them, disappears them, and we can't even touch it, just feel it cold presence. It is an annoying reminder of how little we understand real mysteries, like origin, destiny, death, the meaning of life, and other things humans have been trying to rationalize or comprehend. So, mist, fog, is cool in a dramatic sense, but in its cold, scientific way, it is just another thing that makes us feel what really matters, what we really grapple with to understand, is as ephimerous as the air fog is made of. When I think of Merlin in his cabin in the woods, comfortable with his dusty pile of mystical books on magic and existence, fog seems very comforting to me, at least as a concept. But when I think of my dead younger sisters, my dead father and mother, fog and its hazy blanket brings no relief or answers.
It just irritates me with its stifling, stubborn silence.