The Fog

The weather was beautiful last weekend. I suffer greatly from my own strain of Spring Fever: when it's an absolutely gorgeous day I am filled with guilt and inadequacy. "Look at this," I think, "The grass is that luminous spring green. The sky is perfect. The world is all beauty, why aren't you doing your part? Why aren't you creating more beauty in the world?" It's the same feeling I get in the art museum. "You're just a beauty-user."

Understandably, I feel less pressured by bad weather. Love the rain, even the drizzle. Of all, my favorite is fog.

About 22 years ago there was an epic fog in the Saint Louis area. And, even better, it was a night fog. Gary and I were out buying crystal for a friend's wedding, and we'd driven out to an outlet mall 40 miles west of Saint Louis. (See, children, back before there was the Internet, we had to drive places to buy things.) We drove home disappointed.

On the way home, the fog hit. Driving stopped. You could see only the taillights of the car parked on the shoulder directly in front of you. It was a situation that equalized all cars. SUVs and trucks had no advantage over our eensy Honda CRX.

After an hour of the incapacitating fog, Gary and I got a little impatient, because there was a wedding to attend the next day and the crystal was still not in hand. We had already noticed the only thing visible for miles: the big glowing sign for "Mid-Rivers Mall." So we pulled back out to where we thought the highway might still be, then crept along the exit and across the parking lot to the big glowing "Famous-Barr" sign.

None of the crystal we needed at Famous, either, so we headed out to the mall -- except we couldn't find the exit to the mall.  We  followed the wall on the first floor, then we thought to ask someone.

"How do we get out to the mall?" we asked, embarrassed.

"The mall?" said the perfume lady.

"Yes."

"I don't understand."

(Brief moment to evaluate the language skills of the perfume lady.) "The mall. We've walked all around and can't see how to get out to the mall."

"What mall?"

(Brief moment to evaluate the drug addictions of the perfume lady.)  "This mall. Mid-Rivers mall."

"This is the mall." (pause) " There is no mall."

It reminded me of that Lost in Space episode when Dr. Smith takes the elevator up to the second floor of their spaceship in the parallel universe or something, and he comes back down all ashen-faced and intones, "There is no second floor."

Come to find out, ha ha, we had crept through the minimal parking lot past the massive construction equipment to the fully-finished Famous which was not attached to anything, yet. Sure, there was a sign.  Two points determine a line, and it appears one store determines a mall. About a year later, they finished the mall and had a grand opening.

So, fog. My favorite.

Comments

[yookie]

Oh I so have the opposite way to attack a beautiful day. I figure that in a year, there are probably what- 8 really perfect days? Like so perfect that you would say to God "if I had to choose what everyday should be like, this would be it." In an average life of, say, 80 years, that means you only get 640 days like this. That's under 2 years of really perfect days.

This, in my mind, means that work should be called off and you should do nothing but laze about (is that a verb?) and just simply BE in the day. Just be there and enjoy it! Nevermind feeling guilty about anything-- that day is a gift from god himself and it's meant to be spent enjoying it.

(If I owned a company myself, I would declare all such days as days off, BTW. This is why I need to win the lottery and form such company for likeminded people!)

And, so that my post isn't totally about my egocentric self, might I add that I love the Macy's story. I can totally see where it would feel like the twilight zone!

[TheQueen]

A guilt-free beautiful day? Hmm. I don't know. It sounds impossible.