THE BEAUTY OF FOG
Like a magician's illusionary cape a spring fog unfurled its mantle on Central Park. Like nature's light switch the fog dimmed the lights of the surrounding avenues and its towering ring of celebrity buildings. The manmade world with its flashing lights and billion dollar facades disappeared, stolen from view with the swiftness of a professional jewelry heist. In the dusk of an April evening when the sun has been locked in a starless heaven there's a quiet gifted to the city not used to standing so still. The undressed trees of winter just about to unfurl their linen frocks showed off their dewy bark under the filtered light at the end of that rainy day. Mother Nature had muzzled the finch's mating calls, only the water fowl had come out to leave their rippling wakes on the mirrored surface of Central Park's lake. There's a Monet quality to the park when the fog sets in. It's as if everything has been painted with the eye of an eighty-year-old artist suffering from failing eyesight but with a mandate to create beauty. Everything loses its crisp edges. Everything becomes a little soft, only the black limbs of the soaked oak trees can hold their shape against the weather's gray paintbrush. It's the hardier colors of tulip and daffodil that can stand up to the fog's gray mantle. The lone thump of a single runner's rubber sole on the asphalt ribbon of road that ties its bow around the park is the only sound doing a percussive solo where a symphony of noise is normally heard. It's not until you walk the precipice, the outer edge of the park before the city begins to reappear. The co-ops and condos growing like Jack's beanstalk through the fog and into the clouds overhead.
Tomorrow the fog will have melted like the snow of winter and the sun will turn the sky blue. The birds of spring will find their voices and the single song of yesterday's lone runner will turn into the cacophony of a thousand footsteps and spinning wheels making a different music from the fog's whispered eerie solo.
THE GALLERY
Photos taken in Central Park
Lee Melahn, photographer
April 14, 2015
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