When the lights go down in the city…

First line of that precious and oddly-sanguine Journey song, Light.  The song makes me smile as it triggers neural links to San Francisco — oh and the people there whom I love, the never-enough time I spend there, and the closer-than-you-think crisp alpine air that’s there.

And even in spite of it being a fave, the song reminds me of the part of the day that I hate most:  dusk.

Dusk haunts me.  Haunting like the long afternoon shadows that run toward it.  Haunting like magenta that, to me, isn’t a natural colour.  Haunting like its kindred unnatural colour periwinkle that sometimes dances with magenta as that couple of ‘unnaturals’ waltzes, fading to the darkness of dusk.  Haunting.  Just haunting.

Dusk doesn’t cripple me.  I’m not struck with fear like I suppose someone would be struck if he or she were afflicted with depression.  Nor am I paralyzed by it.  I’m not even anxious because of it.  It’s just there, irritating me in my everyday life.

I pause for it every day, though.  There’s just something about dusk that forces a pause.  Well, I pause.  I dunno what others do, if anything at all.  It’s like dusk is a visual reminder — ugh, of those unnatural colours again LOL — that the daylight has expired and that (like it or not) the things we do that require daylight will need to wait until the next day.  And I think that’s why dusk begs me to pause.  I hate having things end.  I’m forced at that end of anything to take note of what I had set out to do, what I was able to do, and however unfortunate, what it is that’s left to do.  As if I hadn’t already known an ‘eternity’ isn’t really available for anything I want to do.

So dusk robs me of eternity.  I’m lucky in that it doesn’t rob me of sanity, nor of my own internal and outward serenity.  It just sits there, heavy at the end of any day — because g*ddamn it, they’re all good, aren’t they?! — reminding us that either we place a marker where we left off or throw that marker toward wherever light comes back to greet us… you know, to continue doing what we were doing when the lights go down in the city.

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