feeling real poetic

There are evenings in Naranjo when the sunset is unspeakably spectacular. On such evenings, there are about fifteen minutes when the whole panorama is indescribably beautiful, where words really can do it no justice and even the most earnest attempt is doomed to futility. But one can’t help but try.

Looking out from the porch of the health post as the day ends in Naranjo, one feels as if perched precipitously on the inside wall of a great, cracked clay pot, the edges of which are jagged but whose rounded bottom is solid, smooth. Slowly, the silent, unwavering mountains which form the edges begin to take on new forms, no longer making a flat profile against the blue sky of day, but now betraying an infinite series of contours and folds and shadows brought out by the receding, slanted light. Those ridges which reach not up but out are bathed in the dying light and the sunburnt fields take on a rosy hue; the valleys and chutes seem to fade even deeper into the heart of the hills and are shrouded in a deep blue that is almost purple. Only the upper half of the mountains take on this quality though, with the lower parts shielded by the far edge of the pot. The dividing line coincides almost perfectly with a layer of fog mixed with wood smoke rising from so many tiny houses whose very presence could otherwise be easily overlooked. The only light emits from the far, Western edge of the picture, where the bottom of the deepest rupture in the bowl is filled by an ever-so minute, inverted triangle of brilliant, neon orange that despite its minuteness next to the immense canopy of the sky, is so incredibly concentrated that it commands an epic, calming power over everything in its reach. The clouds immediately above and to either side of the sliver of light reflect that energy, but the atmospheric prism in-between changes its color from orange to a vivid pink, showing the subtleties of the clouds and echoing the effect playing out on the sides of the great bowl. Forms appear within the clouds, like the skeletons of giant celestial fish rising to unseen insects, as their earthly counterparts invariably do at the same time of day. In that in-between place, the orange mixes and swirls with pale yellows and the powder blue of the fading day, creating new colors for which there are simply no words. What about the sky gives it the right – some ancient poetic license – to violate all the rules of the palette, to blend colors like orange and yellow and blue to create something so purely beautiful, when on a canvas the result would be a nothing more than a muted gray-brown? As the triangle of fluorescent orange descends toward the bottom of the bowl’s narrowing fissure, its color only intensifies. But in the moment that it is finally swallowed up, the edges of the clay pot regain control, instantly losing all of their depth and relief, and becoming stoic silhouettes against the daytime’s pale gray evening cousin. Asserting their regained, primordial dominance over the landscape, and despite their complete stillness, the hills seem to rise up even higher in that moment, and in anyone lucky enough to be watching there grows a feeling of absolute and utter insignificance. And although now gone from sight, the triangle of orange is indomitable in the face of the towering peaks, as it continues its campaign to influence the goings-on inside the great clay pot. The little orange dots that now appear scattered in no particular order at various points around the pot’s sides are its final attempt. Although somewhere in the back of his mind the observer knows these orange dots to be evidence of human activity – something he has completely forgotten for the moment – he can just as easily believe that these are tiny little pin-prick holes in the pot where the light perpetually shines through from some place below.

Only when the dome overhead at last loses its final traces of daylight and the brilliant white stars emerge in a million little piercing specks does the observer notice the new dots that have appeared on the far side of the bowl, reflecting the stars above. But these he knows to be the halogen street lamps of a town, and he is brought back to what he knows as reality.