The other evening I was innocently walking along when I looked up and stopped right where I stood, transfixed by the sundowning sky. It was brilliant! Storm clouds closed ranks overhead, dark and billowy, shot through with flashes of white and light gray. Steel-wool balls and bubbles. They parted at the horizon just enough for the vanishing sun to fling splashes of brilliant color this way and that as a parting gift. The yellows, golds, and grays were not subdued but they could only serve as background noise to the shouts of the reds and oranges. And even they paled before the shrieking fuchsia that wove in and out as the light moved. God, it was beautiful.

I stood and soaked in the vision – then sighed, and reluctantly pulled down my rose-colored glasses. It was just as I feared. A lovely, though fuzzy, sunset, to be sure, but someone had brushed a pale white glaze over it, blurring and subduing the entire scene. The steel wool overhead softened into dirty soapsuds. The golds and grays refused to give prominence to the oranges and reds, instead insisting on sharing equal space and saturation. And the fuchsia, far from shrieking, did not seem to exist at all.

I replaced the lenses and thrilled again by the vision, I strove to keep it in my mind so that it could overlay the real thing. I wanted both pictures – the real and the not-so-real. I had my camera phone but what I did not want was a photo, because the camera would record what was there — not what I saw. Not one passerby looked at me strangely, by the way, as I stood in the middle of the sidewalk staring into – as far as they knew – nowhere as I flipped my glasses up and down over my eyes. I suppose that says something about… well, something.

I like my dual vision of the world; my lying eyes show me hidden wonders in the dreary and the mundane. The dull bark of a tree suddenly acquires shadows and depth, as if I can reach out my hand and pull earth from the deep brown valleys that wove between rich burgundy hills. I call up a memory, years old, and still marvel at the bright, shimmering green of the palm fronds as they spread themselves wide, a perfect contrast to the small, autumn-colored leaves of its neighbor tree. So California, this combination. The two together made each stand out more than they ever would by themselves, I reasoned.

It was when I was gazing at that particular scene, in fact, that I happened to look over the top of my rosy glasses and got my first shock of realization. What I was seeing was not what was actually there. Or, rather, it was there – just not exactly how I saw it. The two trees still stood next to each other, and fronds of the palm still waved gently in front of its neighbor – but gone were the deep hues, the brilliant colors. The shimmer! They, together or separate, were just … trees. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So, yeah, I see the world through rose-colored glasses sometimes. I bask in it, even. But I always remember that underneath that world lies another that is not quite as brilliant, or soft, or beautiful as I imagine. Yet.

After all, the brilliant colors I saw may not exist in my sunset – but I think they do exist somewhere. Don’t ever give up looking.

[sunset photo from here, where they also have many more lovely pictures]

And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

by Emily Dickinson

[photo of this intrepid little bird via Gulf Recovery Fund]

“… all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.”

- John Burroughs

[photo via]

BBC – Anglesey writer, 82, lands three-book deal

An 82-year-old teacher and theatre director has been given a three-book deal after writing her first novel.

The Great Lie, the start of Myrrha Stanford-Smith’s trilogy, is a fictional look at William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe’s rivalry.

The Brighton-born grandmother from Anglesey said she was gobsmacked to be offered the book agreement.

She decided to seek a deal after positive feedback to a children’s story she sent to BBC Radio Wales.

She said she was unprepared for the reaction from publishers Honno, however.

“I had to put the phone down and ring them back as I was so taken aback by the whole thing,” she said.

Good for her. What a hoot!

via

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Sequoia National Park, via

Rock art in the Tassili massif of Central Sahara

via

Who was she? The credits say “Mulatto ex-slave in her house near Greensboro, Alabama, May 1941”, and I’m not sure why they have told us that she is mulatto, but then this “colorism” business that still grips and poisons didn’t come breeding alone out of the earth, more like it was cultivated, nurtured with far more attention and care than the lives it crushed underneath as if they were the weeds.

Did she make the quilts? Crabbed and scarred hands pulling the threaded needle through scraps of this and that, I’ve seen these old women (and young) place each piece with meaning, and some with none at all beyond that the shape or the colors fit. No bright hues here in the photo that became a work of art as soon as she sat her old bones down in the rocking chair and competed for focal point with the bright, insulating newspapers with the little blond boy front and off-center.

Who put them there? Did she paste them one on top of the other whenever she got some to keep out the cold that was always finding a new way in, is that how it works? or did she or someone spruce up the walls for the photo shoot and whose idea was that, anyway?

She’s looking to the side or maybe just not at the camera, almost not there except that of course she is, she is, but it reminds me of that look we get sometimes when we’re in a situation that we don’t want to be in but have to endure for whatever reason, maybe because of a power that might have nothing to do with us or little for us that decides for us whether we want whatever they are offering or not.

I don’t know but did you notice the dingy patch up on the wall toward the ceiling? Maybe it couldn’t be reached or paper ran out or time like when someone comes to the door when you are not quite ready to let them in. But sometimes they come in anyway.

She is beautiful and as art it works, this mulatto woman who was an ex-slave sitting in her bedroom and sitting room with the bright new contrast to her old wood slat bed and old quilts and old body and old chair – oh,  is that dingy patch on the wall maybe a small, stubborn rebellion? – a picture taken in 1941 when she had a designation and a color but apparently still no name, it’s a shame I can’t just enjoy it, I wanted to do that, but I can’t help it I just have questions, questions, questions.

Like – in this carefully cleaned and appointed room, why is there a padlock sitting on the empty chair?