The Sun Sets — and What’s Wrong With That?
Last evening, the little wife and I took a stroll along a nearby stream, during which we happened to be walking directly into a typically lovely Korean sunset. Somehow, given the current state of things, including the outrageous fact that millions of healthy people in the formerly-dubbed “free world” are currently barred by the state from taking such strolls — the concept of “sunset” seemed more portentous than usual. Or rather, the event’s intrinsic portent was unchanged, but my own mind’s inclination to bring the figurative to the foreground was accentuated by the circumstances.
Mankind’s most essential and enduring metaphor for endings, final moments — Mother Nature’s simplest and most universally understood haiku — was keen to make itself heard last evening. For we are now living through a civilizational sunset, and overly focused, much of the time, on the ugliness of it, particularly the ugliness of what we are discovering about our “fellow man” — who, as is now revealed, is neither our fellow nor much of a man.
By design, I had my camera with me during this walk. Thus, I can now share a few of my sober but not unpleasant musings with all of you.
Enjoy, then! — for that, after all, at least to the extent that one may approximate the perspective of the gods (and why else would they share these sights with us?) is what sunsets are for.
(You may click on each picture for a full-screen view.)
