June 03, 2020

For ten weeks, it’s been a delightful challenge to think of topics for my weekly blog. I look for inspiration in the odd trials and small joys found during social isolation and the upheaval of my life as I knew it. I find ideas through an offhand remark or a story I read in the paper or something I see on my daily walk. Week to week I pick a subject, sometimes right at deadline.

But this week? How do I pick a lighthearted topic when our region has exploded with anger and rage and violence? When the noise of sirens is a constant in the background as I write? When the fragile hope of some return to normalcy with reopening of businesses has been destroyed by looting and vandalism? Is now the time to write about flowers and music and books and friends?

It’s Monday night, already past deadline to turn in my blog. As I stand in the kitchen, doing the dishes, I’m still puzzling this out. What to say, what to write? Impossible to address these extraordinary days, but impossible to ignore them. I hope that by the time this is posted, the city won’t be burning and the sirens will have stopped, and the healing will start in earnest. But that takes a long time. Coronavirus won’t go away by Thursday, nor will broken buildings and people heal overnight. By nature, I’m a hopeful and happy person, and like to look on the bright side of things. Heck, I throw parties for a living. But it is hard to find a bright side in this very dark moment.

I opened the back door to let some cool air into the kitchen. There was an odd light in the sky, glowing on the horizon. Swirling grey clouds had darkened the sky to make it appear like night had already fallen, but the sun found a way through and lit up some of the clouds fiery red and gold while others remained gray and stormy. I went out to the street to stare at the sky, mesmerized by the tumult and chaos and absolute beauty of the sight. I was all alone. No cars. Everyone inside due to the curfew. Just me, alone with the sky that seemed to mirror all the anguish and emotions of the moment. The sky burned brighter and brighter, gorgeous with color, then faded into night.

I remember a handful of spectacular sunsets through my life: rowing to shore from a sailboat at Half Moon Bay in 1978, watching the sun set over the Nile when I visited Egypt in 2006, catching the perfect summer sunset from the top of Tarzan’s Tree House at Disneyland last year. Tonight’s sunset is one I believe I will long remember; for its drama and emotion, and for the reminder that indeed there can be beauty in the midst of distress, and it is when the clouds gather that the silver linings (or gold ones, in this case) appear.