In the way that coats and hats obscure my body, fog shrouded the city. I stepped outside and only could perceive a few dozen feet in front of me. Knowing I live in a dense neighborhood was more the product of memory than direct observation. I went for a walk in the evening and was involuntarily invisible. Sure, I was wearing my most reflective jacket, but light has to find to me first. LED streetlights cut crisp shadows out of the cable and telephone lines, sharp like the 2019 Anthony McCall exhibit at the AKG Buffalo did with light instead of shadows. I walked. It was calm, quiet, and peaceful.

It’s the season of fog and the season of Lent. My Catholicism is unrenewably lapsed, yet Lent persists like the snowdrifts do. Self-reflection is a good habit in seasonal moderation. Most years I have a keen sense of the practice that needs to go, or the one I need to acquire. My heart says “Do this!” and so I do. This year? I am not so sure. And while “perfect” persists as a word entirely unsuitable to describe me, “imperfect” is a truth I have great peace with. The older I get, the less I feel inspired to relentlessly ensure I’m as flawless as possible. Perfection is an impossible goal. I get to be alive – isn’t doing the best I can enough?

Really though, I get to be alive.

In the gray, in the white, in the cold, and the warmth of mine and my loved one’s homes

alive

just, simply, and sweetly, alive.

Perhaps I’ll let my focus rest on that, the joy of that, the struggle of that, and see what happens next?