The Foggy Faraway

Tomorrow will be the third day in a row starting with a dense foggy morning. I’m not describing a metaphorical fog, because Lord knows we have plenty of those around here, but a genuine meteorological fog so thick it probably shows on the radar map. Sunday the sun came out for the drive home, but today the late afternoon had fog equal to the early morning.

Crossing the bridge over the Sabinal River, I looked to the left and saw a tall owl sitting near the top of a mostly dead tree. Nothing else on that side of the road was visible with any clarity, but that bird perched frozen on its branch and foggy background, merely one dimensional. Ahead of me was pea soup, as the old-timers used to say, but now I’m saying it, so we know what that means.

Tomorrow when I drive to painting class, I expect to travel through a gray glaze much like the one I apply to my paintings when I want a hill to recede into the faraway. How easy would it be to brush myself into the faraway with tinted Liquin-loaded bristles, smooth the sharp edges, reduce the contrast, flatten the panorama, almost disappear.