Sunsets

"Look at the Northwest sky," Karen called me on my cellphone last night.  Adam said the same thing a couple evenings ago. And so I haven't missed our recent sunsets, which have been extraordinary.  What is it?  Something about the heat?

Whatever it is, I'm tickled that my family admires the artwork of the universe.  I remember walking out the law school door after my last final exam of my first semester.  "I could have had a Spring," I thought, "and maybe it isn't too late."  As I biked home, I looked around, wondering why I hadn't been paying attention.  It wasn't that I'd had my head in books every minute.  After all, I'd ridden the bike to school that very morning. It must have been the foggy bubble I carried with me like Pigpen's cloud of dust.

My "now" isn't your "now," is it?  Nor yours mine?  The older I get, the more I wonder how different they are.  Consider an obvious example, Karen's grandfather's.  He hardly hears and he scarcely sees, but his "now" is as real to him as mine is to me.  The differences between you and me fall elsewhere on the spectrum. 

Looking at this from a different perspective, how objective are the things we perceive?  We've been taught from birth to think that this chair has objective physical characteristics that anyone with normally developed senses can observe.  That belief has been confirmed by various people describing the chair and treating it similarly to the way we perceive it.  Nevertheless, as one who has seen a "Matrix" movie, I can understand the idea some folks have proposed -- that we might be pawns in some alien's computer game.

Sunset photographs usually disappoint me.  This is no exception. It's too bad Jerry isn't here to give lessons.

"Not bad," says Virginia, "but I guess you haven't learned how to turn off the flash."

Bingo.