Old light

This morning I saw a photo on Facebook of the “new” arriving in Barcelona. It was pale blue, pink, a light yellow.

For a moment I thought I was stuck in the old, not being there, having cancelled my flight on the last-but-one day of the old year.

I saw a photo of the new arriving in Barcelona. The sun was about to rise over the city. Under the blue, the pink, the yellow, there was a dark purple, a deep greyish blue, a bottomless black.

The new had just arrived. It was everywhere. In every colour.

“If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing.” (Rilke)

I saw a photo of the new arriving in Barcelona. I saw the pink, the black, the yellow, the grey, the blue in many shades, I saw it in every colour. 

I saw the old. It was invisible. It was everywhere. In pale blue, in pink, in the brightest yellow.

And I suddenly remembered seeing fireworks the last time I arrived in Barcelona. For no reason. It was October, it was warm, the city was lying at my feet and there it was. It was beautiful.

But not as beautiful as the stars I saw in dark nights later on elsewhere in Spain. Old light, fireworks which travelled years to reach our eyes. 

 

(photo: October 5, 2014 - Barcelona)