Light
A really good sunset isn't a moment in time - it's an unfolding of splendour. The light changes all the time, touching the clouds, setting the horizon aflame. Imagined lands and possibilities live briefly in the sky, then pass back into the shadows. Very rarely - at Land's End, atop the fortressin Arezzo, up the road above Harlech bay - I've seen the whole spectacle. More often I catch a flash of it, out of the corner of my eye, but by the time I find a way between the buildings, it's gone, until the next time.
There is a magic in the light you get when bright sunlight meets stormclouds. The deep, billowing grey of the approaching wall, suspended in the glow of afternoon sunlight. The spire of Norwich Cathedral, caught against a sky like that, is like a golden spike driven into the heavens. And when the rain falls from those clouds, it hits the ground in a shower of sparks, a multitude of rainbows.
It's all about light. Buildings, hills, water, these are all fine things - but it's how the light hits them, the way it changes from minute to minute and season to season, that makes them glorious. Once you realise that, every moment can become a new experience, because though you pass the same things, the light will be different. You can;'t manufacture that moment - it has to fall on you.
[I should, of course, post this at some time other than 10pm on a Sunday night, because then someone might read it. But tomorrow the way I see things will be different, and the day after, different again. If no-one is at the river as my boat floats past, they'll be there for someone else's]
There is a magic in the light you get when bright sunlight meets stormclouds. The deep, billowing grey of the approaching wall, suspended in the glow of afternoon sunlight. The spire of Norwich Cathedral, caught against a sky like that, is like a golden spike driven into the heavens. And when the rain falls from those clouds, it hits the ground in a shower of sparks, a multitude of rainbows.
It's all about light. Buildings, hills, water, these are all fine things - but it's how the light hits them, the way it changes from minute to minute and season to season, that makes them glorious. Once you realise that, every moment can become a new experience, because though you pass the same things, the light will be different. You can;'t manufacture that moment - it has to fall on you.
[I should, of course, post this at some time other than 10pm on a Sunday night, because then someone might read it. But tomorrow the way I see things will be different, and the day after, different again. If no-one is at the river as my boat floats past, they'll be there for someone else's]