Time Displacement and the Numinous
A story counted by Gossamer Penwyche is recounted by Terry Boyle in Discover Ontario: Stories of the Province's Unique People and Places. The story leads to a realization about temporal displacement.
The experience: "Several hours had lapsed while I had noticed only a few minutes."
The lead-up:
Then the song ended and the hawk let out another cry. The hawk stretched its wings and took off suddenly, flying directly towards Gossamer. She explained, "I threw my hands up to protect myself. It came so close that I could feel the rush of it its wings on my cheeks as it flew by me. My fear turned to amazement when I caught a glimpse of the hawk's large, fan-shaped tail. It looked like a feathered cape or the train of a doll's dress. I was so startled that I slipped off the rock and fell into the stream. I was certain that I heard children's laughter as I struggled to sit upright, waist-high in water. I looked all around me for the source of the laughter but saw no one."A great blue heron wadding and spearing a frog. A snowy owl taking flight over a ploughed field exposing mice. A loon dive and surfacing.
[…]
Gossamer, instead of feeling puzzled by this loss of time, felt only disappointment.
"I wanted to be in that weird and wondrous place I had been in just moments before. I wanted the magic to return. My fairy encounter, for I have no doubt that is what it was, has hunted me all my life."
All moments that could pass unnoticed without attention. And a modicum of familiarity with one's surroundings and a sense of safety … Gossamer's experience is set in a place where she is "alone and unafraid" playing in one of her favourite haunts.
Setting and set.
And so for day 1776
24.10.2011
