When Dusk Falls

 One evening, I was out at the time the sun was beginning its descent in the sky. Those familiar orange-purple shades washed over the heavens. Closer to the sun, the orange was brighter and deeper. 

As the seconds progressed though, the colors rapidly shifted - both in tone and location. Right overhead, there were wisps of clouds stretched out in a longitudinal shape. At the start of sunset, they appeared like diaphanous grey-white chiffon, floating dreamily.

The setting sun slowly streaked those wispy clouds in shades of orange, starting to color them from horizons outward - darker to faint tint. 

“It’s glorious”, squeaked my toddler in delight, bouncing around me and looking up. 

Slowly, the red-orange glow filled the entire sky from the sun-setting horizon to overhead and beyond. It petered out on the other side into a beautiful periwinkle blue smudged with grey. 

Children always hit the thing on the nose. It was truly glorious. A gorgeous orange-red-purple light enfolded us below. And just as I was taking it all in, the purplish periwinkle blue was taken over by darker tones of cerulean and azure blue. 

Soon enough, the orange tones recede fully back to the sun. The chiffon clouds are back to being white-grey wisps. The sky is getting darker - cobalt blue giving way quickly to a sapphire blue. The trees in my neighbor’s yard now appear as brown-black silhouettes - a magical color that’s not entirely black and not entirely of a color that let’s you make out the details of the tree. 

This mid-late blue hour is rather hazy and blurry. My eyes were trying to adjust to a blurry Prussian Blue world. The day was changing outfits. It hadn’t discarded the old costume yet and the new one still to be fully worn. 

And just like that, the deep dark night fell with a navy blue shade now taking over. 

I’ve seen many a sunset in my day. I love them. I could live off of watching sunsets. However, this sunset brought to me the realization that the sky becomes a dynamic, moving canvas for twilight to paint on. Back in university, I studied about interactive sculptures that are dynamic, temporal and ever-changing in appearance because the viewer becomes a part of the composition as they engage and interact with it. I have a vague recollection of an installation I read about somewhere that was a gigantic rectangular metal frame placed outdoors (perhaps by the sea) and people moved across it on ramps creating dynamic photos. I have tried searching for the name of the installation but search engines can’t seem to find one so maybe my memory mixed up something. 

The point is, the sky at dusk is dynamic too. Ever-changing…and it takes us along with it in the change. I realized that dusk grows - it doesn’t come all at once. It gradually builds up - bridging the liminal space between day and night. It allows a graceful end to the day and slow onset of night - you get to adjust your body and mind too. Dusk prepares you for Night - for a different rhythm to life. 

Because I’m writing this at midnight, my brain wants to sleep but I feel like there is a deep lesson in how to adapt to different phases of life by gradually working your way up to where you need to get to. 

(Postscript: Edits and typos will be corrected when the brain awakens.)