The entire canyon had become blanketed in by fog. No, not fog. Up here it isn’t fog. Up here we are in the clouds. The evening sky had been crystal clear the evening before so this caught me by surprise. There was only the slight hiss of misting rain. A bit of wind. The nocturnal song of insects now hushed. I could hardly even make out the other buildings a few hundred feet beyond me. It was beautiful.
There is indeed something strangely beautiful in not being able to see clearly, or very far. There is something oddly familiar in the familiar becoming obscure. There is comfort in it. The comfort of letting go of the illusion that I can make things clear. And that by that clarity I can make things right. I can’t make things right because it turns out I actually don’t know how to do that. Things aren’t clear. No known effort of my own can change that. I should know by now that my efforts to know and fix the world have resulted in further chaos and less clarity. I am unable to even fix myself. Yet I keep trying and failing at both.
I liked what I’ve read so far in Leahy’s Substack. I will admit to a bit of wariness about its title “Stillness in the West” because—let’s be honest—religious people talking about The West these days can get ugly. So far so good.