Dear Rita,
The sun goes down now just after 6pm and it’s as if someone switches on the night. The darkness is abrupt and I miss those long summer evenings. I want to be outside at dusk when the light is lingering, possibly with a glass of wine (which is now prohibited here and seems quite extreme? Oh and cigarettes and tobacco also banned – the black market must be thriving).
Posts Tagged ‘12/04’
Long evening
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Dear Hannah,
In the early evening you notice the light, as it’s still there. It introduces a stretched kind of time that belongs to summer, when the day is over but it is also not yet night. It’s time to stay a little longer; to watch the clouds and the sky and the intensified colours that precede the sunset. That’s what you do. The soft blue mingles with streaks of pink, blues and pinks and purples spread across the sky. A bright dark orange seems to come through the blue, as if it had been waiting behind it, shading the bricks of the apartment building across the street, and as if the light temporarily coates everything it touches with a layer of ‘specialness’. Take a final close look, before the world goes dark.
Only now I read that the rays of the Sun encounter atmospheric particles (like dust and water droplets) when the Sun is just above the horizon, which filter the sunlight, creating this special light, the golden hour. It makes me think of the beam of Sunlight yesterday morning and the floating p a r t i c l e s that became visible.
I had bought some wine earlier, a bottle of Shiraz from Western Cape, especially for the occasion. You are watching a perfectly shaped triangle of birds flying over and start to feel the effect of the alcohol… you are not so used to alcohol these days… It quickly alienates you from your surroundings and ironically it makes you fall asleep before the sun is down.