8 posts tagged “sunset”

In the late afternoon after the storm, I looked up from my desk and noticed the house across the road was bathed in pink. Rushing to an upstairs window, I saw the western sky was rivers of crimson. Minutes later--by the time I grabbed a camera--it had faded, and the last of the light disappeared behind distant, cloud-shrouded Fuji.

sunset after the storm

In an old part of Tokyo in the late afternoon, I passed a narrow alley. The houses faced each other, almost touching, and pots of flowers and plants filled the available space. The sky behind had turned red, and I felt a sudden and unexpected rush of love for the sheer quantity of human existence; so many lives being led so closely together.

Tokyo at sunset
chaos of humanity
ache of affection

--Julian

Autumn sunset
stains the horizon
the color of ripe persimmons

--Julian

The banks of raggedy, spindly pink and purple cosmos daisies are gone, leaving the tall, tan susuki grass to define the fall landscape. Ancient and elegant, it bends in the breeze side by side with a more recent interloper, the yellow goldenrod.

The rice has been threshed, and the paddies are empty save for piles of husks and bundles of straw. Flocks of sparrows glean there, or wheel away in search of other seeds.

It's dark when we rise and dark again by five. This has been a tough week of working late, but last night I headed home while it was still light:

Leave with the pink of dawn,
return with the red sunset
the day unseen between

--Julian

Fuji silhouetted by a crimson sunset
High art
Signed by a vapor trail

--Julian

Here in Kanagawa, the Bon Festival of the Dead is held in the middle of August. Almost every farmhouse in our road has decorations at the front gate. On a small platform of sculpted dried mud sit a sleek cucumber and a bulbous eggplant on wooden chopstick legs. These represent a horse and cow respectively, and are the vehicles for ancestors to revisit the family home.

In the driveways sit more modern vehicles from which children and their parents spill, for Bon is also when living relatives come to the family home for a few days of reunion and vacation. Many businesses have closed for the week and commuter trains are empty; other trains are full.

This is the hottest part of the year but the days are getting shorter. The clocks don't change for summer in Japan so the spectacular dawn chorus of insects is before 5 a.m. when most of us are still sleeping, and it is dark by 7 p.m. During the day the sky is blue, with white cumulus clouds on the horizon. Cicadas scream and the heat bleaches the scenery. In the evening, the temperature drops to the point where it comfortably envelops your body.

The air is a little clearer than usual this week. Yesterday evening, I came out of the house to find a turquoise sky shading down to a pale orange behind the black silhouette of Mount Fuji. When darkness fell, the sky filled with stars. Later, standing on the pebble beach and listening to the crashing waves, we could see the faintest trace of the Milky Way.

--Julian