Gray Day

Posted on April 2, 2009 in Weather Zoos

The sky is blank. Not the kind of blankness that lets you pull out a pen and write across it “This is my story and I am going to take up calligraphy just to scribe it ever so beautifully across your hearts.” No, this day vibrates with silence. It buzzes into your head and gives you a headache. The little white factories that produce dullness as their principal product soak it up, store it in their worker’s hearts. People in gray and white cars — that spew the stuff of which gray days are made –slow for yellow lights and pick their noses waiting for the green. I see pink flowers but I don’t care about them. There’s a tremble in the back of my mouth that won’t become a voice. The day is full of knots that I can’t untie.

Oh for a blanketing fog — at least there would be comfort in that, chilling and birthing. Yesterday when I went to the zoo the sun came out-and applied a little tan to my arms. The luminosity and the shade annoyed me but that was because I had my camera. Animals chose the places that were both shadow and light. The light meter in my camera could not decide on an exposure in Bear Canyon so I climbed onto the highest mesa and took photos of the rhinos who were sunning themselves. Though the same color as the dust, they stood out clearly. I could disassemble them – head, horn, back, rump. The dirt pretended they were one with them. The breath of one scattered the particles in front of it, letting the sun illuminate its respiration. Gray days resist manipulation of any kind. From this comes their sadness.

Later in the day, it begins to drizzle. My mood picks up. At last the atmosphere is showing some character.