{"id":6355,"date":"2020-09-11T06:55:11","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T13:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=6355"},"modified":"2020-09-11T06:55:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T13:55:32","slug":"when-fog-met-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/when-fog-met-smoke\/","title":{"rendered":"When Fog Met Smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-6355\" data-postid=\"6355\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-6355 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve taken many a walk on Oregon&#8217;s socialist ocean beaches, but the one the other morning (Wednesday) was unlike any other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was early and I walked alone. Where the sun should have been was nothing but a dull orb. Smoke had met fog and both were engaged in some kind of cosmic battle for the sun&#8217;s appearance. There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but I had other thoughts on my mind, like more lyrics for a country song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everything around me was colored a blunted orange and gray. It was the strangest combination of color I&#8217;d ever observed. At one point I took a picture of the color but the image turned out merely gray. Interesting, I thought. My camera couldn&#8217;t pick up the color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ocean was doing its thing, of course, as were the few gulls I encountered. I walked to my complex of forts expecting them to be smashed to smithereens from yesterday&#8217;s gusts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surprise! Joy! Not a single one blown out! I get better at fort building with every new fort. What&#8217;s that they say about having to do something for 10,000 hours to become an expert at that activity. What about 100,000 hours at something?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I left the beach and walked home, I wondered if this unique color would last all day, and how it might color people&#8217;s lives. I also thought about the last line from a poem by Richard Hugo, perhaps my favorite poem, \u201cPort Townsend, 1974,\u201d a poem set at the ocean&#8217;s edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That line is: we are absurd.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve taken many a walk on Oregon&#8217;s socialist ocean beaches, but the one the other morning (Wednesday) was unlike any other. It was early and I walked alone. Where the sun should have been was nothing but a dull orb. Smoke had met fog and both were engaged in some kind of cosmic battle for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6357,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6355\/revisions\/6357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}