Mystery is the place where we can finger the ragged edges of what we know and begin to make peace with what we will not know. (Stephen Jenkinson)

            In my part of the world, days are getting shorter. Sunset begins sooner each day, signalling not only the end of another day but the end of a season. If I wish to continue my cherished evening walks, I shall have to walk in the dark. The summer’s mellow evening light has now shifted to late afternoon, slanting in at a different angle, lower on the horizon.  

Letting go of sunlight each evening is a ritual practice for letting go of much else in life. Whether it happens abruptly as the sun drops behind a mountain, or in a lingering blaze of warm colors (as is common on the prairies where the sky goes on forever), sunset blends awe with melancholy. This one day is almost over and cannot be retrieved, reminding us that our lives too will end. Yet the beauty of the sun’s disappearance is so varied, so evanescent, and so necessary—how could the earth and all its inhabitants continue to live without daily darkness and rest?—that we are cleansed by astonishment.  

The very word life shouts out promise, potential, opportunity, breath, vibrancy. Life has drive and will and force. It continues its changes forever. That which does not change, that does not obey the principle of death and resurrection into a new form, will die most certainly and finally, declaring its essence to be not-life.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more lifeless it tends to be.

(Alan Watts)

Sunset has to do with time and change. Celebration and loss, all at once. So we cling to the loveliness, even as we rejoice at the prospect of rest. We gaze at the dance of color and watch the earth around us take off its robes of light, giving way to starlight and moonlight. Who would have it otherwise?

            These days, I’m asking myself how to let go and what might need to be let go. A friend is losing independence, giving up the tasks of caring for herself (when will that be my lot?). Another friendship seems lost entirely as we walk different paths now (shall I stop trying to maintain what was?). The pandemic has taken away both political innocence and a certain social ease (can I find hope again in realistic possibilities?).

 Some once-loved books have ceased to matter; they will be “remaindered” (to use a publisher’s phrase) and turned into something else that can be made with recycled paper. I’m not sure that the memories I will also have to relinquish can be recycled as usefully. There are no cemeteries for books, and photographs of my library end up looking like artifacts of interior decorating. 

Certain shelves of said library remind me that what seemed wise to me once upon a time is now folly, much as teens might look back on their favorite crib toys with a sheepish smile. Not all beliefs continue to sustain, necessary as they may once have been. Circumstances have changed. I have changed. I am now embarrassed to admit that I once had a copy of Total Woman and read it mostly without irony, although I might have felt twinges of critical thinking over the worst of its excesses. As the sun sets on some days, the ending is entirely welcome.

There is a reason that photographers, amateur and professional, have probably all indulged in sunset phases. Melancholy and awe are addictive, yet essential to our humanness. We know very well the flutters of possibility within a new love, and the throbbing ache of a lost love. Regret and satisfaction. Is that reading too much into the result of light passing through more of the atmosphere and hence being scattered by additional particles?

My struggle for words is at an end. Let sunset photos finish this reflection. Each one was taken in a different place and hence calls up different memories, different feelings. I leave them untitled except for numbers, and I invite you, my readers, to let me know which one(s) call to your heart.