of suns and settings

"When the facts change, I change my mind."  So said John Maynard Keynes famously.

But he was only partially correct.  Sometimes we change our minds when our perception changes.

I have spent far too much blog space recently grousing about the lack of culture in Melaque.  After all, this is a beach town where visitors should not expect a Julliard-trained string quartet on the sand.

Last week I decided to do something I had not done in months.  I wandered down to the shoreline to watch a sunset.

There may be a reason why I stopped taking an hour out of my day to watch the sunset.  Perhaps my aversion to repetition.  Or the fact that familiarity often breeds indifference.

The result?  I had a great time and told myself I need to watch more of these light shows.

Melaque has some outstanding circumstances for sunsets.  The angle of the sun creates some unusual colors -- especially, yellows.  And if there are clouds in the area, they will come in various shapes.  Disney would be envious in his crypt.

I was puttering around the house yesterday afternoon and noticed the sun was starting to go down.  The sky had been overcast for most of the day, but there were breaks in the cloud cover.  You can see from the photograph at the top of the blog, there were plenty of interesting cloud formations to create a nice sunset.

There were even subtle touches.  Like a detail from a Turner painting.

I can usually entertain myself while waiting for the big show by watching the local skimboarders.  But last night there was only one guy brave enough to ride the huge waves we have been exeriencing for the past week.  And he was not very good.

And neither were the prospects for a good sunset.  Most of the clouds were low enough to block the horizon.  I could see a bit of the horizon.  But most of the clouds simply turned darker shades of grays and blues.

Just as I was getting ready to head back to the house, I noticed that one of the clouds was showing a bit of pink.  And then, almost as if someone had thrown the light on an Amsterdam porch, the sky lit up in a shade of bright red.

As is true with most photographs, this one does not do justice to the color.  What you see looks far more pink than the red I experienced.

But that is a quibble.  It was one of the best sunsets I have seen in my three years in Melaque -- simply because of its unique construction.

And I would have missed it if I had been sitting in my duplex muttering about Melaque's need for a good Brecht theater.

There may be a lesson there.  Like changing my mind.