Promises to myself are soon another weight on me.
My favorite time of day is defined by the light. When you can lie back in a shaft of afternoon sun and let your focus drift to the tip of your nose and see it turn the same warm, rich, umber color of the side of a Scandinavian sun on white tablecloths or the side of a stuccoed Italian villa in an oil painting. I love that. The sun catches on eyelashes in those few minutes. Little red rainbows layered in the hairs of my bangs against blue skies always make my mind blank and then I wish I could remember French poetry. I could soak it up for hours, but it’s only a few more minutes before the sun dips below the tree branches and rooftops. The sky has a yellow edge, now, and a few clouds that look like a renaissance background. This time isn’t my favorite because I take a sun induced siesta, but because it makes me think that everyone has seen this sky. There are layers of history in this quality of light. If you have enough imagination, you can imagine a Viking at sea look at the sun drip off the water on his oars, or a soldier sees it glint off of barbed wire as a small consolation, a quill catches the late day sun through a stone window in an English monastery and God is there. That’s what keeps me in the window; the continuity of history represented by the sun rising and falling every day. I read about people’s lives throughout history at every given opportunity, but only when I think of Jeanne d’Arc, sitting under a banner of lilies eating supper, in the rich warm sunshine do the layers of acclaim fall away and she can just be a girl in the sun.