The Eons
Seattle is a place of moods -- or, perhaps, a more accurate way to put it is that places around Seattle tend to trigger shifts of moods, odd perceptions, or other emotionally significant events in me. Today, I had another such experience that happened to be familiar to me, because I'd had it numerous times when I was a child living in Southern California.
Seattle, has a "big sky," one that somehow seems to go on forever beyond the rim of the world. This is probably an effect due to the topography of the area, but it gives me a feeling of endlessness, of eternity and infinity visible beyond the horizon or the tops of the mountains. This afternoon I was taking Bus 345 from Shoreline City College -- I'd taken a 5 up there from 87th and Greenwood, where I'd done some shopping at Safeway, because there is no northbound bus up Greenwood that goes directly to where I live, but there is one coming south on Greenwood from the college, so I transfer there -- and as we came down Dayton Avenue North from the college, then turned onto Westminster, which merged with Greenwood Avenue North, one of those strange moods or auras hit me:
The sky was utterly clear, a glorious blue, and seemed to stretch away in all directions forever. Looking east, there were countless conifers among the homes and small businesses on all sides, and in the distance were the Cascades, under that awesome sky. What I felt right then was a sense of being in a transition between eons -- not eons as most humans measure them, but rather in the geological sense, huge blocks of time each of which is characterized by a unique biota, recorded uniquely in the record of the rocks. Something beyond human, in which humanity's time on Earth is easily lost, here and gone as quickly as the life of a mayfly. For that moment I was part of the procession of the ages of Earth's long history, the history of life on Earth, not as a human being, but simply as a viewpoint, carried along on the flow of time like a chip of wood on a river in spate. I had been temporarily lifted up out of the human world and human concerns, and for an endless moment I was part of eternity and infinity, part of the changeless and eternal even as I was carried like a mote of dust on a river of time broader than the universe.
It was something I'd felt many times in Southern California as a child, only now I had a way to describe it to myself. I knew what I was feeling, and I could communicate it to others. What it means, I have no idea. But the sense of peace it gave me, due to that temporary emotional disconnect from human concerns, was a balm to my soul.
Seattle, has a "big sky," one that somehow seems to go on forever beyond the rim of the world. This is probably an effect due to the topography of the area, but it gives me a feeling of endlessness, of eternity and infinity visible beyond the horizon or the tops of the mountains. This afternoon I was taking Bus 345 from Shoreline City College -- I'd taken a 5 up there from 87th and Greenwood, where I'd done some shopping at Safeway, because there is no northbound bus up Greenwood that goes directly to where I live, but there is one coming south on Greenwood from the college, so I transfer there -- and as we came down Dayton Avenue North from the college, then turned onto Westminster, which merged with Greenwood Avenue North, one of those strange moods or auras hit me:
The sky was utterly clear, a glorious blue, and seemed to stretch away in all directions forever. Looking east, there were countless conifers among the homes and small businesses on all sides, and in the distance were the Cascades, under that awesome sky. What I felt right then was a sense of being in a transition between eons -- not eons as most humans measure them, but rather in the geological sense, huge blocks of time each of which is characterized by a unique biota, recorded uniquely in the record of the rocks. Something beyond human, in which humanity's time on Earth is easily lost, here and gone as quickly as the life of a mayfly. For that moment I was part of the procession of the ages of Earth's long history, the history of life on Earth, not as a human being, but simply as a viewpoint, carried along on the flow of time like a chip of wood on a river in spate. I had been temporarily lifted up out of the human world and human concerns, and for an endless moment I was part of eternity and infinity, part of the changeless and eternal even as I was carried like a mote of dust on a river of time broader than the universe.
It was something I'd felt many times in Southern California as a child, only now I had a way to describe it to myself. I knew what I was feeling, and I could communicate it to others. What it means, I have no idea. But the sense of peace it gave me, due to that temporary emotional disconnect from human concerns, was a balm to my soul.