Wild Spot

Last night, I sat on my roof to look at the full moon. The light it gave off was very bright in my yard...brighter than the white Christmas lights we put up along the picket fence. As I sat on my roof in the cold, I thought about how beautiful this spot must have been in the silver air. I've seen it in the dark before, but last night, I felt that there might have been a different look to it with that moon being so bright and the air being so cold. The colder the air is, it seems, the more clear it is. I like to think that these woods, with that type of night-moon, is sharp and cuts. I imagine it like a blurry photograph that when put through several photoshopping tricks, becomes more stark and gains more contrast. All the images I imagined last night when I sat on my roof are becoming negatives in my mind.

It is really cold. Fall is gone, or so it feels. It technically is still around, merely a shadow of itself. On one of my first posts about this place, I examined a patch of lichen on the wall above the cave. I mentioned that it was shaped like a fat angel. I wondered if it would change shape through the passing months. It did. Much like I did. I feel like something has happened to me. I won't go into detail. It isn't bad, it's a really good thing. But it's a solitary thing, as well. And coming to visit this place only makes the feeling more intense. And ironically, I began reading a novel today that sort of relates to this feeling. Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre. The feeling isn't really existential, or maybe it is, but I don't want to say it is. I guess it's more one of solitude. And being here just makes me feel connected with that feeling even more. Although all these different elements--the trees, the mineshaft, the dead reeds, the bricks, the litter--compose an environment that I have enjoyed for over the past decade, they are all elements that stand alone by themselves. And that no matter how much or how often I visit this place, I will never capture it. Nor do I desire to capture it. I like mystery and I like change. I like surprise. I like what Baca said about how we need to re-create, re-visit, re-do things. I don't ever want to grow nauseous with a place. I want it to always be new, exciting. And another odd thing. Today is the anniversary of Philip Larkin's death. I read this poem of his today:

THE WINTER PALACE

Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.

I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had at university

And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I've never been in certain places.

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.

*

This poem is very withdrawn. I like it a lot. I like its solitude.

I am going to continue visiting this place. Choosing it as my wild spot for this class was not a spontaneous choice to re-visit an old spot that I haven't seen in a while. I've been re-visiting and re-visiting without there being any itinerary or agenda. That's because I'm drawn to it. I'm drawn to the dark places. I find this place in other places, as well. In places that most people don't find as dark. It's interesting and hard to explain. The same ill-ease I feel when I visit this place sometimes is the same ill-ease I feel when I enter my closet at home or walk under the New Kensington bridge. I want to keep this ill-ease, though. I like being uncomfortable. I like the threat.