the color of dusk

I wish my eyes were like wide lens cameras. I am always wishing that the images I see with my eyes could be recorded, exactly as I see them, for me to come back to and revisit again and again. It would be great if I could flip through the images that enter my pupils like slides on a screen. Or like one of those little Fisher Price View-Masters I had as a kid, with the circular reels of miniature slides. I used to love putting those big plastic binoculars up to my eyes and clicking through the pictures. If my mind’s eye were like the View-Master, each time I blinked it would click to the next image, captured perfectly for me to enjoy again and again.

I was thinking about this tonight as I was squeezing in my run just before dusk. I wished that my eyes were able to permanently capture the beauty in the sky so that I could share it with everyone when I got home. But then, I guess that’s what writing is for, so here goes.

The coming of dusk tonight reminded me of a water color painting that I bought in a snow covered square in St. Petersburg several years ago. The sky was rent with long horizontal brush strokes fanning upward in colors of orange, pink, pale blue and ivory. The colors quickly became richer and thicker, hiding the sun behind dark indigo blue and purple like the color of cone flowers. Slender streaks of rose seemed to extend out from underneath the dark blue cloak of clouds, back lighting the sky with lavender hues. I passed the white steeple of “El Camino,” the Iglesia Evangelica whose bright silhouette stood out as if it were a picture in a pop-up book. It was the opposite of the bare trees whose thin branches looked charred like the color of charcoal against the sky’s canvas.

When I rounded the corner on the last stretch of my run, the clouds overhead had blended into the deep gray of evening. The vibrant colors which lit the sky moments before had faded into darkness now. I looked down and noticed a sharp black shadow moving over the flashing marquee of the S&S Cafeteria and the intermittent blinking of red and green from the stoplights. I didn’t recognize it at first, but after a moment I realized that it was me.

(Photo by jpstanley)