The Gift of a Kodachrome Morning

We should not take one ordinary day and two ordinary eyes for granted

I was saving this for a rainy day. This might be just the one, when I need to stay focused on the good things close at hand. Hope you do the same. See you on the other side. — Fred

Journal excerpt / 30 October 2020

Our eye’s rods and cones convey raw perception—a sequence of nerve-impulses—to our creation of meaning, to our memory and aesthetic—is an eternal marvel and under-appreciated treasure—the Eye-Brain-Soul trinity.

A scene like this morning’s shot, from which the camera only delivers pixels, is vastly more rich and deep than a message mere light in the eye of the beholder. Words hint at but do no justice to being the owner of the eyes and memory comprehending an ordinary scene like this.

Doomed in the telling to make it less than it was to me in the moment, I could describe to you, dear journal, how marvelous it was to discover in the light of this image that the angle of sun has changed from the time of our move here, that the planet has indeed tilted its axis from mid-June until now. The first shafts beam up Tuggle’s Gap to strike Panther Knob (the highest peak left of center) end-on rather than the side-glancing rays of summer.

I could tell you, and you might humor me, about the relentless push of the clouds--a motion not evident, of course, in this still shot--a airy armada of atmospheric emissaries from the Gulf or Arctic that we witness every day, that we had never before today seen scurrying along as energized as this, thanks to the remnants of the recent hurricane.

Finally, and perhaps the most remarkable private and ineffable memory and failure of language from this one morning was the sudden appearance of the odd golden leaves so far away, yet visible, wafting and swirling in the amber light against the distant ridge. What could they be, the dozen of them?

The binoculars showed the dazzling fairy-like flying objects to be nothing more extraordinary than so many vultures, but marvelously bedazzled by the orange light of morning, making their reflective black feathers cast back the amber-gold of first sun. They could not have been more beautiful in this apparition had they been angels from heaven. And then they were gone.