Frozen

-"How does it happen"?  That was the first amazement that engulfed my mind when I was standing still. Facing the panorama of an induced stagnation.  Enormous and profound, Lake Michigan was dousing my senses with awe. I am not sure whether it was the stretch and the placidity of the lake, the  muffled glow of the whiteness, the mystery of fuzziness offered by the mist hovering in the air or the lonely scarlet lighthouse standing tall amidst a world of pallor, that rendered an unearthly sensation in my head. In the distance, the boundary of the lake was losing itself in the horizon, and in the vicinity, right within myself, a spellbound me was losing the sense of time. 

-"What do you think you're doing? Hurry up..it's getting dark."  The voice of my sister jolted me. Being nudged out of my trance, I quickly tapped my side for the strap of my Nikon DX, that usually hangs off my shoulder whenever I anticipate a spectacle---natural or unnatural. But to my dismay, my fingers brushed against the smooth surface of my AF jacket, without any trace of my camera. 

-"I think I forgot my camera at home".  I uttered those words with an incredulous smile. And I was not sure what was the appropriate reaction that could justify the fallacy I just realized I had committed.  Scornful to myself to the brim,  I turned to my friend, who I knew was the only one carrying a phone with a decent camera. 

-"Hey Tina, could you lend me your phone? I can't believe I forgot to bring my camera."
-"Well, I can." Tina winked and took out her Pixel2. 

Photos capture time. They are frozen copies of moments that you keep within your reach to help you relive those instants to which your nostalgic heart wants to go back but your poor memory and your otherwise occupied mundane brain refuse to take you. Even in the era of countless selfies and relentless pressing of an expensive touchscreen, some odd hours expose you to a universe of sublimity. When every click means a world. Every frame imprisons a fleeting moment never to be revisited, captures an emotion true only for that very instant, and integrates you with the surrounding in a one of a kind way. In a nutshell, during only a few odd lucky hours you consider yourself to be unlucky enough to have forgotten your camera and rebuke yourself a million times for being so hopelessly forgetful. It was definitely one of such moments for me.

A self-proclaimed purist and a snob of photography, who respects this activity as a revered form of art but lacks any considerable amount of knowledge and skill that could justify the snobbery, I reluctantly took the phone with a mindset ‘something is better than nothing’. Months later, today, when a changed circumstance renders those spots out of my reach, I scroll down with great pleasure and a grateful mind the photos that Tina forwarded me.

The red lighthouse towering high in front of me was offering an impeccable contrast. So did the file of the black contours of distant tourists walking past it. The setting sun and impending darkness curbed my enthusiasm to climb the tower and throw an unhindered gaze into an impeccable beauty of stillness. So, I decided to look through my lens and freeze the piercing cold reigning over the surrounding inside a safe haven—of the warmth of my tender memories, by virtue of a modern technology. I turned to the haphazardly placed boulders by the edge of the waterline; I took close-ups of the half-done concrete construction left there to render a little more safety to that risky protruded shred of land that had gotten washed away numerous times in the past causing many lives to be lost; of those hypnotizing azure lamps that created a bright necklace harmonious to the indigo of the mesmerizing panorama of the icy world during dusk; and I fixated my agape attention upon the plethora of the wild and surging waves, astoundingly petrified with the lash of a magic wand. I had never known before the possibility of an undeniable charm in stagnation and so I kept going back to the spot to believe my eyes.

There I was, speechless and humbled, witnessing the effort of a profuse energy belching out in the open thwarted by an overpowering adversary. The effusiveness and vigour of the wild waves before they had frozen revealed itself in each of the countless wrinkles etched on the smooth surfaces of those humungous ice chunks.

-"Are you lost? We should get going, it's getting dark", a cautious voice of my sister rang in my ears.

With that I came out of daze and found myself surrounded by scattered headstones and a notice with the smiling faces of two deceased teenage boys. And all of a sudden the danger in beauty dawned on me. The charm of something so unfettered like the billowing waves must be a threat to a pragmatic heart. The promise of an exuberant life hidden in the beckoning of nature can easily snatch away the life within one. The incumbent desire of running forward can make your journey cut short right at the beginning of the race. And so there I was, witnessing the extraordinary burial of those who want it. It felt like looking at the embellished lid of the Pandora’s Box, tightly shut with secret treasures lying beneath its solid cold surface. A placid universe of riveting charisma, where alive and dead reside side by side.

The piercing chill of the winter wind did the job that my coveted watch could not. Quite adeptly it placed a wandering soul on the right context of ‘time-and-space-connectivity’. There, I had it. Within a narrow window of time, I managed to leave behind my companions and my conscious self in the realm of a corporeal present and saunter through the labyrinth of my imagination. I sat face-to-face with the recluse in me and savoured the sound of silence. I smeared the magical hue of the surrounding all over my exterior and gulped some more to decorate my core. And then I got up, bid adieu to that unearthly spactacle, put on my mittens, and pulled the furry hood of my winter jacket over my face.

It is time to get back to banality, to the flow of life as I know it. It is time to get back to the car.