Wednesday, 22 December 2010

In The Bleak Mid-Winter...

Snow is here and the country is blanked in white cold. Being British, the country has almost ground to a halt, and parcels aren’t arriving anytime time too.

For me, though, the snow creates a whole different world. It muffles the general sounds of a city, blanketed in snow my home is made strangely quiet. Gone are the normal sounds of the city. It changed the quality of the light and darkness. During the day the sunlight was so much brighter, but it’s once the sun has set that the snow deeply changes the atmosphere.

At dusk the red sunlight is bounced off the snow creating a red/orange glow to everything, as if the whole area is bathed in failing red light, from a dying light source. At night, after the sun has rapidly set, the snow glows blue in the moonlight, giving the view a deeply strange and epithelial feel. At night, I look out at the views, from our house, and almost expect to witness some other-world creature. A hunched over, pale and thin daemon creature tip-toeing across the landscape or jumping from one blue/black shadow to another; or else a translucent ghost drifting across our blue light garden, leaving not a mark on the cold snow.

Yes, my mind is strange. Most people see snow and think, “What a lovely, Christmas Card landscape.” I see the snow, especially at night, and think “This has such a potential for a supernatural theme.”

Drew.

P.S. The picture, at the top of this blog, is of our back garden at dusk, taken by my partner Martin. To see more of his pictures go to: http://martins-day.blogspot.com/

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