A slant of light in winter (Landres)

 April 29, 2021


Light streams in the window on a dreary, dead winter afternoon. Like music played in church, the light is ethereal and other-worldly, juxtaposed against the solid room we’re in and the naked wintered trees we can see through our window. But instead of the light being a delightful change that brightens our day, it oppresses. Why is this? As winter comes (that dead, inert season that takes place before the season of regrowth) we are gently heralded into it by its gradual coming. The winter is expected, and we simply wait for its bleakness to take its course.

But then, if a slant of light should stream into the room, we are startled; perhaps we were unprepared for that presence of intangible beauty and brilliance in the midst of the wintery setting. This stark contrast forces the light into an other-worldy role: it signifies, perhaps, a heavenly rebirth among the still, dead, natural environment. But the observer, still living, passes in imagination through the discrete stages of death and rebirth by the pull of these juxtaposed images, oppressed with the weight of this sudden journey.

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