Sunset

Currently this is my favorite time of day.  When the light turns saffron and slithers along rooftops, when the shadows stretch and the black-headed grosbeaks make their final songs.  It is when I gather dinner supplements from the garden, when my toes grow cold, when the dogs make their final maniacal gallops around the house and the cats beg to come out from one more snack of clover.  It is my favorite time to photograph the midas touch, my favorite time to breath the cool river air rising, my favorite time to kiss the day goodbye. 

This past weekend I attended a memorial for a dear friend's mother.  I feel my life, perhaps all lives, can be best described by dichotomy: I am surrounded by rounded bellies carrying souls yet to be born, by mourning for those who have passed on, by children in curls and babies discovering their own feet, by friends who are faced with their own mortality in the bloom of youth, by the scars on my own chest and the still-fresh feeling of hair on my head.  I'm dizzy with the spin of life and death.

But I know this: I'm grateful for the life I have, for the life I live, for the time I am granted.  I wish to live in grace and light, but I wish just as fervently to live in the raw grittiness of human emotion.  To be present and honest.  To be full with the spectrum of life, rather than reside only in the prettiest colors.  If we only have one shot at a life, then I want to greedily gather every experience I can.

And lastly, I want to eat my greens.