it began ever-so-slowly. but on a day we needed a glow, the glow showed up.

all of a sudden – from our adirondack chairs on the patio – we could see a glow peeking out, growing behind the metal sunflower over in the fern garden in the back corner of our yard.

we are sunseekers – but not in a tanning sort of way. on this day, after many days of humid and overcast, humid and hot, humid and ridiculously hot, here was a day that was significantly less humid. the early evening was starting and we were not sweltering. instead, we were tiki-torch-sitting in the backyard, watching the world turn.

i aimed the camera around the yard – to capture that time – barney and our daylilies, the taller switchgrasses, the birdbath, the pond, the ferns and breck, dogga laying on the deck. a half hour later is when the sun started to sneak between the back of the garage and the fence – the amber of my favorite spotlight fresnel gel – this time backlighting the metal sunflower we brought home from dogga’s birthtown across the state.

the sun is streaming across the quilt right now. it is a glorious early morning and our windows are open. the streaming sun assuages worries we carried into the dawn.

i think about all the times i have spent deliberately watching the sun rise. the fence-climbing into crab meadow beach, the eastern sky over the ocean, the sky over lake michigan, over the mountains, in the utah desert, climbing over redrock. i think about all the times i have spent deliberately watching the sun set. northport harbor, the gulf beaches, over summit county mountain peaks, over the grandest of canyons and the quietest of canyonlands, the answer to the sunset of the eastern sky over the lake, off the dock up-north, looking west from our southport beachhouse, in endless farmlands, on favorite hiking trails, off the coast on-island.

to deliberately watch the sun is to see in-real-life the parameters of a day. to know that – in what feels like an instant – another day will start, another day will end. and on and on it goes.

we recently heard news of the death of someone we knew. it took us both by surprise and saddened us. and it made me fall back into that weird space i always feel when learning someone has died – the wondering space – where i wonder how it is that the world can go on if this person cannot feel it.

i know it does – go on.

and i’ve never really answered the question. it just feels too big – too humbling, too consuming, too heavy, too existential – for me to truly wrap my head around it.

i don’t know…

maybe that’s why i watch the sun rise and the sun set.

maybe the glow knows.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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