Eventide

My good friend Jessica has a blog called Sweet Eventide. As she explained it to me, Eventide is that transitory part of the end of the day that is magical. It’s her favorite moment of the day and I agree that it is magical.

Impressionist painters were obsessed with this time of the day because it was so ephemeral. They would use the fading light like acid to change and define everything even subjects that were deemed immutable. Whether it was to “melt” the past or redefine the future, it inevitably connoted change. This transformation, however, was always encompassed in beauty.

It’s a time of the day that one can look into the sunset and pat oneself on the back and say “good job today”. It’s a time of the day that wraps up all the pragmatic issues and allows us a sense of accomplishment. It’s a time of the day when a ritualistic bathing in the golden glow of the sun cleanses the day’s events and prepares us to dream of tomorrow.

I bring this up because last Friday April 10, 2009 approximately 6:15pm, I had a surreal “eventide moment”. I was in the countryside about an hour and a half outside of Shanghai when I stood on a road that seemed to be aligned perfectly east to west.

Unlike California, this part of China is perfectly flat so all I could see was open farmland and countryside for miles around. As I stood on this road basking in the sun’s golden glow on the west, I noticed a perfect full moon to the east. The amazing part was the alignment of these two empyreal bodies.

Both orbs where perfectly aligned at their respective ends of the road and both orbs were about the same size and almost at the same azimuth and altitude. I wanted to reach out; grab them both, switch them, and see where destiny would take me and what change in beauty would this bring.