We live in the southernmost corner of the West Edge on a cul-de sac street that runs down a ridge between two canyons. If I walk up the hill to the end of our block, I can see the Pacific Ocean way off in the distance, and I can drive to the Mexican border in half an hour.
The sun comes up a little later here at Casa de Swell than it did when we lived a few miles west on the coast, or it seems that way to me. The house and garden are snugged into a steep hill to the east with more and taller hills further on until the land drops to the desert and California slides into Arizona. The sun has to climb high, high before it’s visible, and by then it’s thrown a lot of light at whatever is in the sky that morning, taking its time. It has all day, after all. Things dance to a sunrise.
The sun sets in the ocean, of course, plunk, like a penny in a fountain, there one second and not the next, its trumpeting, dying day flaming against whatever clouds are around a minute or two later: blood orange and ‘seventies hot pants pink that darkens to purple sky and indigo sea. Gaudy Vegas women, the sunsets here.
Sunrises are softer. The glare-y bit doesn’t last as long and isn’t as blinding, as face-burning hot. Dialed down, the nuclear fusion is just getting started, not flinging molten lava solar flares around just yet. A flare is not lava, you know; it just looks like that in pictures. It’s not a thing even, like boiling iron or even boiling gas; it’s an explosion of electromagnetic radiation that shows up in radio waves and x-rays and gamma rays. How telescopes can see a picture of something – spewing, arcing lava-like stuff that breaks like a wave and drops in hot drabs, falling back to the sunsea – a picture of something that isn’t a solid or liquid or gas I can’t imagine. So I skip the science class and imagine the clouds are feeling the warmth and changing colors in response, like toast that browns under the glowing coil, flowers that open to catch it, hold it.
People are gaga for sunsets. When we lived a block from the beach we saw them every day, walking in front of the house and across the street, heading west like tan zombies to stand on the bluff for a few minutes as the round sun flattened and drowned on the horizon. Sometimes we went too and stood in the jagged line above the sand and sandstone, everyone’s west-facing skin golden and lit like watchers at a campfire. The temperature drops noticeably when it’s over; a thin chill seeps off the water and wraps your ankles. Time to go. It’ll be dark soon.
I like sunrises more, and mornings and coffee. I like things at the start of the day, people stirring, eyes opening, sleepy smiles at what’s ahead. There have been enough endings in my life recently; I’ll stick with beginnings.
