the blue of distance

I woke up in the middle of a sad dream that left me wanting more, and diana's birthday presents that sing to me about hope and loss, and e b white's writing about the light and bounce of spring, and a snippet of ezra pound, and a persistent ache in the left side of my head, and pam's message about walking the dogs on the beach with her family, and my absurd thwarted hope of a true blue dream of a sky on this day, and now I am crying.

"The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air; it scatters in water. Water is colourless, shallow water appears to be the colour of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the colour blue."

Rebecca Solnit, "A Field Guide to Getting Lost"