Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Fog, a.k.a. setting for stun


Carl Sandburg did not live on the Eastern Shore. If he had, he would know that fog doesn't creep in on little cat feet, but is poured from a ladle, splashing over the side of the soup bowl.

If you want a taste of the surreal, drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge when it is suspended in/emerging from thick fog. It hangs with you, leaving you similarly suspended, then mires you in slow motion.

That same sort of suspended fog has filled my head the last couple days in the form of a head cold--one that ladles fog between your eyes, ears, body and brain, leaving you thick-headed and thought-inhibited.

Thick-headed until the head fog starts to lift, gradually giving back sight, sound, sun and thought.

Yesterday, as I started to get my head and body back, I was reading Bob Hicok's Insomnia Diary and came across this gem:

finally we threw our mouths away
when language got in the way of being stunned.

I think that's what I was getting at or trying to say last week. And maybe some of what my friend and fellow scribe TWM, aka 41hebrewcat, was trying to say here. Fucking words, man. And yet, when strung together right, they can stun.

So trying to emerge from the fog and being stunned by words, the power of the right words to stun. That's where I'm at [that was a good drum break].

* photo from the San Fransisco History Center, San Fransisco Public Library, Creative Commons.

2 comments:

Elizabeth Bastos said...

It is stunning that what we say or write manages to capture anything.

Michael Valliant said...

Aahh, so true...