Random thoughts on Saturday night… Now Listening to Led Zeppelin- Ramble On

Sunrise in California. The day looks different when it begins from a different perspective. SunRise, Sunset. Sunsets are my favorite thing. They are predictable in that they must happen everyday. The day must come to an end. Living on the West coast of Michigan I grew accustomed to seeing the sun melt into the fresh waters of Lake Michigan in the evening. Start to finish we chase the sun. either it is behind us and we are sprinting to keep the dawn at bay, or pressing on venturing to the next destination.

Reading through novels it always seemed strange to me that writers include a respite from the story line to describe their characters ceasing to feed their worry or drama simply to stop, breathe, live, and observe the wonder of another day ending. I always wondered what they saw. ( fictional or not.) I wonder what the writers saw when they wrote it into the story. I wonder if that was the sunset they saw the night they completed those pages, or if this one sunset was so good that they have to find a place for it in their otherwise chaotic and messy characters’ lives.  Writing about something everyone has experienced in different places, different countries, different colors if the on looker is color blind.

I can’t imagine life without color.

Life without color- that’s like a book without words in my world. Don’t get me wrong, there is intense beauty in black and white, but it lacks warmth and vibrancy. Sometimes I think I’m writing in black and white because reading back the words, all i hear is “blah blah blah.” No fire. No spirit. Just shadows of what was and is. Sometimes it starts out with broad strokes. Black and White. And as the story unfolds, ribbons of color emerge. Emotions burst forth and it is no longer an exercise in spinning a yarn. It becomes something you see, feel, taste, desire, lust, hate. That moment when something went from paperback to graphic novel.

The day has reached its end. I didn’t get to chase the sun to his final resting place today, but he did leave behind one beautiful light show. Hues of red, pink, purple mash with yellow and blue. So beautiful I could stop from pausing to appreciate the day’s end and a gift from the sun.