Sun Go Down

In the grand tradition of “Bill writes about what he sees,” I am going to burden the non-readers of the blog with another sunset. Yes, as a sidenote, I am aware that no one will read this. Since I got a sitemeter some weeks ago, it hasn’t registered a single hit. So, this may just be a pointless exercise, were it not for the fact that I enjoy writing about these things. So ha, ha!

Now to the point. I just took a long walk, spent traversing the small cemetery next to our apartment complex, peering at fading gravestones and reading the names on the family monument. Some amazing characters: you’d be surprised how much one can derive from a gravestone.

Returning back to the apartment, I was greeted with the familiar but no less disheartening sight of the television running. Disheartening only because I am painfully aware of my inability to resist the siren song of the moving images and accompanying sound. Desperate to avoid that fate as long as possible, I swiftly retreated to the balcony. What a happy retreat, indeed.

The sky to the west, of which I have a perfect view is mostly coated in patchy clouds. The sun, long striving to break through them, had been periodically launching shafts of golden hazy light that cast their divine shine over the entire sky. Seeing that strategy just wasn’t going to work, the sun did the next most sensible thing. He dove underneath the clouds. In a matter of seconds, the fiery orb had plunged beneath the clouds and was busily painting an indescribably gorgeous vermillion on the clouds’ cotton bellies. Those clouds would rue the day they challenged the sun. He left their tummies burnt red. The sun itself I can’t see, because it has ducked below the top of the apartment building across the way. But I know right where he snuck down because the grand canopy of ruddy pink traces its origin back to a fiercely glowing orange hemisphere, the lines of every cloud vividly outlined by the pumpkin orange of the sun.

Of course, the silly sun spent himself in the effort to beat the clouds and so his victory is short-lived. Even now, swift is his retreat, the clouds now only getting the longest red rays, the last effort of an exhausted ball of fire. Soon, the color will bleed from the sky and the clouds will reassume their confident ashen faces, cool and refreshed by the sun’s departure. The sky overhead is already the barely blue, light white that precedes the long drain into indigo and then black. It will be light out for some time, but already the street lamps are turning on and the pool is glowing as the underwater lights heat up. The kids are finally leaving the pool, but there’s a small cadre of older folks firmly planted in the jacuzzi.

It’s time for me to go, too. The mosquitoes are circling hungrily and my stomach is growling in a menacing way. So, I’ll leave the clouds to their brushed steel selves, say goodbye to the couple trying to fit more furniture than is in Versailles into the back of a tiny pickup, and wave to the parents and child playing tennis awkwardly as their tiny dog runs about chasing after the ball.