Just to be different this week, let's start with a quiz. You can all join in. Ten pithy clues - some more cryptic than others - to people, places or things that reference mistiness in some form:
I'm posting quite a short blog today for a change, because it's misty and I'm busy, busy, busy. For that reason, plus the fact that I couldn't hope to better what Alice Oswald has achieved, I have chosen to share her poem rather than one of my own:
1) gorillas 2) reggae 3) falling water 4) anime 5) clint 6) aiden 7) andrews/owen 8) pirouette 9) dark lord 10) pacific gas. There are some toughies there, but all of the answers can be found below. (No cheating, give it a go first.)
The science of Misty is approximately as follows: minute particles of water (2 parts hydrogen, one part oxygen) suspended in air (8 parts nitrogen, 2 parts oxygen, with a smidgen of argon). Mist occurs as a result of a subtle state-change, when conditions are right for water vapour in the air to cool and change from an invisible gas to visible water droplets. Miraculous as that it, it doesn't do justice to the mysterious beauty of the phenomenon. But I hope this photograph might. Feast your eyes...
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| Blackpool Tower, seagull, sea mist |
Mist
It amazes me when mist
chloroforms the fields
and wipes out whatever world exists
and walkers wade through coma
shouting
and close to but curtained from each other
sometimes there's a second river
lying asleep along the river
where the sun rises
sunk in thought
and my soul gets caught in it
hung by the heels
in water
It amazes me when mist
weeps as it lifts
and a crow
calls down to me in its treetop voice
that there are webs and drips
and actualities up there
and in my fog-self shocked and grey
it startles me to see the sky
Alice Oswald, 2019
Here are the answers to the quiz:
That's all folks. Thanks for reading, S ;-)