Skies Are Painted Colors in the Cowboy Cliche

Didn't have a camera by my side this time
Hoping I would see the world through both my eyes
Maybe I will tell you all about it when I'm
In the mood to lose my way with words
-3x5, John Mayer

On my run along the Carlsbad bluffs tonight, right at the point where I usually turn around, I stopped almost suddenly to look out at the water. The sun was settling just above the horizon line, a giant globe of reds and oranges and other colors that completely obliterate the spectrum and can't be defined by simple words and token shades. The tide was low, and people speckled the sand; kids searching for sandcrabs in overturned rocks and couples holding hands in the light, lapping surf. A line of seagulls flew overhead, and a few surfers paddled lazily farther out to sea, seeking the day's perfect set before heading home. In that instant, I found myself wishing I had my camera. I wanted to capture this moment; these little intricacies of the sun and sand and sea that remind me why I love the coast. I wanted to freeze the picture before me for eternity; bottle it up in a postcard on the refrigerator or frame on the wall. But then, I realized a big part of the beauty in front of me lie in the mere fact scenes like these aren't able to be frozen in a photograph. You can't "summarize" a scene, much like you can't really summarize a novel (Hemingway would cringe in his grave if he found a student trying to sum up A Farewell to Arms in a matter of abbreviations and muddled clauses). A photograph can't imprison the way salt air smells minutes before the sun dips under the horizon. It can't memorize and recall the way birds soar effortlessly through the sky, slicing a thin black line into the otherwise perfectly blended copper and apricot horizon. And then, ironically, I was so glad I didn't have my camera. Instead, I wanted to breathe in the moment in front of me; recognize and appreciate the fleetingness of time and space and life.

A typical (how can a sunset EVER be typical?) Carlsbad sunset looks like this:



It's entrancing and magic and almost as surreal as a Key West one (or even Santa Barbara, for that matter, but there'll never be a sunset in the world that compares to one of those). But I didn't take that picture. I was too busy appreciating the world through "both my eyes," taking in the sounds and smells and each one of the sights, which happen to extend far beyond the realm of any lens.

(Today I finally overcame
Trying to fit the world inside a picture frame...)