There is something about the sound of vehicles in transit during the moments surrounding the rising of the sun that evokes strong emotion implicating mortality. Something that captures the essence of the transcience of our lives. (What a way to start the blog eh?) This morning I awoke to the thunder of Carlos Pellegrini Avenue out my window. Instead of re-applying my earplugs and burying my head under a pillow or two like normal, I pulled open the window and separated the blinds to look out across the Argentinian Autobahn. What I saw goes into the category of what I am refering to...a bright but hazy golden-orange glow punctuated by the cold, smoky, city air, the sound of squeeking brakes, deisel engines, and tires thumping across the cracks between the pavement. These are all qualities of a scene that I can easily describe, what I am getting at is something in between all these qualities, invisible in the way that our souls are invisible, they are there, we acknowledge that they are, but if we were asked to point them out, we couldn't do it. I can remember when I was in Spain, walking El Camino De Santiago, there were many mornings when I would be up and walking long before the dawn in attempt to avoid trudging along in the heat of the midday sun. Out in the central desert that is called the Meseta, the idea was to get to the next destination by noon, maybe it was thirty five kilometers, when the air would begin to heat up so much that it would ripple before your eyes and you could feel as it burned you skin like the riled up air of a convection oven. So I would awaken at three AM and proceed with a flashlight and map out along the trail, perpetually looking for the yellow arrows that were painted on rocks or tree stumps or fence posts to mark the way. (I still see these arrows in dreams sometimes.) Anyhow, as I walked out of the darkness and into the new day there was always a feeling that lurked in the dim light of dawn, a sense of potential of course, but also a sense of the temporary and the infinite. I think that part of this feeling is that there is a timelessness to sunrises and sunsets. A beauty we can easily recognize and appreciate. We call this beauty timeless. But, in fact, we realize on some subtle level, that in it's timelessness lies the promise that it will go on being just as beautiful long after we have fallen from life and gone back to the earth. The sunset is beautiful for many reasons that we can name, but the reason that it's beauty could be called transcendant is that we cannot really put our fingers on why we feel the way that we do when we watch it happening, just as you could never put a real face to the name of "god". Another of the qualities of sunrise and sunset is that they are an obvious mile marker in the changing of the day. The time is always passing, the day is constantly changing but we really are able to visualize this change when the sun is setting or rising. In the dark of night we need to look at a clock to know how far in we are and in the day we can make a guess at time based on the position of the sun, but this is a guess at best. When the sun is coming and going, we can sit and observe the change happening. For me this concept is similar to that which is found in the sound of wheels whining on some black paved highway in the distance. The roaring of an engine and the blast of exhaust smoke are all symbolic of a change. Of a progression that is constantly happening whether we are aware of it or not. Whether we are ok with it or not. It is tapping into the vien of something that is always happening, just not always observed happening. When I was younger and living back in my hometown I would often walk in the middle of the night in the direction of that sound of the wheels of faraway 18 wheelers screaming on the I-90 highway as it ran past our town. I would walk in that direction and it would eventually deposit me at the railroad track that passed through the north side of town, not far from the highway. There I would would wait to hear the whistle blow far away to the west as the late night train made its way into the neighboring town. Then I could here the rumble and feel the vibrating tracks, and soon it would be thundering by me, wind blowing hard, cars whizzing by, and then it would be gone and as the air again grew still, the rumble would dissipate and then all there was to hear was the receding whistle, diminishing in volume, evaporating into the distance. Just as those trucks on the freeway, I realized that these trains made me feel the way they did because they were time passing. Just in a way that was different enough to be a metaphor that I could see clearly. This was change happening, time going by. This was life being finite, this was the realization of mortality. So then you take this vehicle on the road, this train whistle fading and put it in a scene with the sun slowly rising, the foggy brain, the tired eyes, the hunger of a morning stomach, the receding desire to still be in some warm bed...and you end up with something kind of intense. This is what I thought about briefly this morning as I looked out the window. Then I closed the blinds and went back to sleep. Something I was going to mention quickly turned into a metaphysical ramble. But who am I going to tell this to down here but all of you? Ha Ha! The idea of trying to figure out how to express this in spanish makes me laugh!! Ha ha! I suppose that these are the things that I sometimes find in my cerebro...hasta luego.
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