On the subject of beginnings lets take it back to basics, to the classic dualism of day and night and the twilight times inbetween, full of magic.
There is so much to say about night and day, the expectations and fears of both, intricately woven into the fabric of everything we know.
I used to so love the night and the seductive anticipation of the sunset. The dark and illicit, the eternally youthful rush of hedonistic pleasure, where danger is welcomed but death scorned as a distant enemy.
More recently I have begun to appreciate mornings and the dawn more keenly. There is something incredibly hopeful about witnessing the fragility of a newborn morning.
There is a fantastic poem by Jorge Luis Borges which has an interesting perspective on the matter, i would like to quote directly but unfortunately many of my books are on another continent from me at the moment. The poem mentions the ideas of Schopenhauer and Berkeley that the world is a collective dream of souls conjured solely by those experiencing it, so that at the instant of daybreak when the people able to perform this act of magic are fewest, is the time when the world is at its most delicate.
Well you know what they say about pictures and words, so here's a couple of twilight shots from places I've been for you to make up your own mind about.
Seven Oaks, Ontario
Tofino, British Columbia
Hackney, London
6 comments:
When I was younger I used to romantisize the night. That's when all the interesting things happened. Now, it is all about the soft nature of mornings. I think that says alot about how I have evolved.
You've found me so soon, so yeah i thought i'd give the blog thing a go, see if i can take a leaf from your book or creative thinking ;)
You didn't really hide well ;) Despite popular opinion I am pretty SMRT.
“Break of Day” - Jorge Luis Borges
In the deep night of the universe
scarcely contradicted by the streetlamps
a lost gust of wind
has offended the taciturn streets
like the trembling premonition
of the horrible dawn that prowls
the ruined suburbs of the world.
Curious about the shadows
and daunted by the threat of dawn,
I recalled the dreadful conjecture
of Schopenhauer and Berkeley
which declares that the world
is a mental activity,
a dream of souls,
without foundation, purpose, weight or shape.
And since ideas
are not eternal like marble
but immortal like a forest or a river,
the preceding doctrine
assumed another form as the sun rose,
and in the superstition of that hour
when light like a climbing vine
begins to implicate the shadowed walls,
my reason gave way
and sketched the following fancy:
If things are void of substance
and if this teeming Buenos Aires
is no more than a dream
made up by souls in a common act of magic,
there is an instant
when its existence is gravely endangered
and that is the shuddering instant of daybreak
when those who are dreaming the world are few
and only the ones who have been up all night retain,
ashen and barely outlined,
the image of the streets
that later others will define.
The hour when the tenacious dream of life
runs the risk of being smashed to pieces,
the hour when it would be easy for God
to level His whole handiwork!
But again the world has been spared.
Light roams the streets inventing dirty colors
and with a certain remorse
for my complicity in the day’s rebirth
I ask my house to exist,
amazed and icy in the white light,
as one bird halts the silence
and the spent night
stays on in the eyes of the blind.
:)
(line breaks messed up due to comment restrictions, but oh well)
Thanks very much man, i think i was remembering the title wrong :)
I'm a big Borges fan, and poetry fan, so the two go well with me.
When I read through the collection of his a couple years ago, I noted the ones I liked best, and that was one.
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