Visions

Bound for Alaska on a Sunday evening, we rose up into the domain of sky high sunsets. Stunning in their intensity, thrilling in the way they linger as you barrel through the atmosphere, making believable for a brief moment the idea that a day could possibly last forever.  Alas, we never can seem to fly quite fast enough to overtake the darkness.

I sat next to a friendly Alaska Airlines pilot returning home from vacation in Oregon. He gave me his window seat, the one I so often give up to my children and favorite colleagues. We chatted. We looked at his special pilot maps on his Ipad. We talked about how fuel is stored in the wings, and how they have a "cookbook" of recipes to fix any mishap that might occur on the plane.

Yet, the real story was the ancient tale of the dying sun materializing outside the window. On this night, it streaked the sky with a brilliance of pure mythical quality, a vibrant contrast of color, blood orange rising up to meet a pale yellow that melted into the cool blue of the ceiling above. Mystical in the way it existed only in an ephemeral space, devoid of all texture, form and substance.

It felt like a sign, a symbol, an epic drama demanding unconditional attention. As the colors deepened, the scene took on an aura of violence, a primal scream, a bloody awakening, the afterglow of a savage underworld rebellion beneath the fathomless depths of the sea. It was as though a knife was pierced into the surface of the darkness, making real the foundations of the legends of old.

But stories, like daylight, cannot continue forever. And so the deep blue slowly continued to close down, leaving only red fading to brown, forcing the characters in this fantasy to gradually succumb to the draw of the powerful, black line of the ocean, where one lone fishing boat appeared in the vastness as though a star from below.

Then just before the end, the slightest hint of green glazed an ethereal swath across the horizon, as though a gentle dust of peace had been spread over the fire that came before, a resigned acceptance of the death of the day, for those who refuse to go lightly. And finally it faded out in one last, smoky gasp. And all color was removed from the world.

And then, came the stars.