Until the Fog Lifts

January 7, 2016

I spent an afternoon planning a winter 2016 motorcycle loop but thought better of it as I noticed the mud I’ve been pedaling through to work. So I wrote a post about mud.

A quiet squeak reminds me I meant to oil the chain.

Like faith or politics, winter fog appears profound to the extent it presents a blank canvas to reflect our own impressive predilections, our own ontological prejudices about what’s really there.

From pulpit, podium or pundit, we acquiesce to meanings asserted precisely when clarity is absent, assuming sovereign regalia, though invisible, signifies superior insight. There’s a YouTube video, after all.

Election season brings these thoughts to mind as I bike the now-empty path from home to downtown — so much fideistic energy spent defending synthetic propositions.

Ironic claims of perspicuity supplant empiricism. Little evidence is so clear as our own ideas reflected back to us. Besides, anything else exceeds 140 characters.

We move forward nonetheless knowing the ice and fog face the inexorable embers of rationality. They cannot last. The clock never ticks back.

I stop to take a final picture along Warm Springs Avenue. I think I might have enough images to make a little set and bloviate with a couple beers later.