Photo Challange: evanescent

coffeeandink.blog

What I truly love about this photo, and the series of photos I captured on this day, is that it’s the last day, the last afternoon of 2015; New Year’s Eve. The fog and the smoke from woodstoves create a thick veil and wash out all the brighter color. (see reflecting: https://coffeeandink.blog/2017/05/16/reflecting-winter-2013/–this photo is just down the hill from that one). The sun is trying to push it’s light through the fog/smoke, but there is still this otherworldly sense, for me, of impermanence, twilight, light and dark entwined preparing for the birth of the new year.

What I love about word histories, is that they capture so much more from the meaning of the word by exploring its roots (or “wheel ruts” of the English language). This is from etymology.com

Evanescent: 1717, “on the point of becoming imperceptible,” from French évanescent, from Latin evanescentem (nominative evanescens), present participle of evanescere “disappear, vanish, pass away,” figuratively “be forgotten, be wasted,” from assimilated form of ex “out” (see ex-) + vanescere “vanish,” inchoative verb from vanus “empty, void” (from PIE *wano–, suffixed form of root *eue– “to leave, abandon, give out”). Sense of “quickly vanishing, having no permanence” is by 1738.