Sunday, July 30, 2006
Flashback, Flash Forward
Well, it’s been a heavy week and a stuporous weekend. Evi, Deelie and Scott left us early Saturday morning, and Kel, Zaq and I spent the rest of the day, well, resting. Okay, we spent a little time walking in the park, exploring the reconstructed museum concourse and playing on slides, but mostly we slept. We had a lot of resting to catch up on, because SATURDAY WAS FAMILY DAY: the very day, last year, that Kelly and I received our fabulous child. He’s learning more every day, getting stronger and more confident, and makes us delightedly happy. And keeps us damn busy. Hence, the need for extra sleep, for all of us. And I’d do it again.
Needless to say, Zach had plenty of fun during his week with his cousin. How much? Take a guess.
However, now the house is empty again, Family Day has come and gone, and a new week is starting. There’s a lot I could ramble about - the Chicano art exhibit, that weird piece of investment marketing I got, my heart scan test and the likelihood that I’m not harboring a major coronary that’s just waiting to happen.... But instead, I think it’s time to do a bit of slate-wiping, so to speak. I need to take a moment and get clear (in a non-Dianetics sort of way). So, I think I’ll offer up for your delectation at this, the dawn of another week, the story of a sunset that I still sometimes dredge up to enjoy when I want to smell clean air and remind myself of something entirely, utterly pure:
I’ve tried to figure out exactly when I saw it, but the details are more evanescent than was the moment itself. I’m also not really sure specifically where it happened. Mostly, I just remember that I saw it. After all, that was the important part.
I’d been looking for it for some time, the way one looks for pots of gold at the foot of a rainbow or for angels when you see a shooting star. It’s a legendary phenomenon, and I was enough of a cloudgazer to know of it and to have searched for it for years already. I’d seen the shimmer of the red tide at night; I’d seen the ruddy glow of a towering lenticular at dusk. I’d seen the perseid shower, sheet lightning, eclipses total and partial. I’d seen sundogs and moon rings with their subtle spectral refractions. But what I hadn’t seen was the superhero of celestial luminescence. I wanted to see the Green Flash. And then, at some point around 1990, I did.
It might have been ‘89, actually, in the summertime. Kel and I drove up from LA to SF, exploring whether we could relocate there. We learned on that trip that we couldn’t live anywhere else, but the key moment came well before we reached that robust conclusion in those boho precincts. We’d taken the scenic route, Hwy 1 up the coast, so Kel could see more of what CA was all about. It’s a long drive, full of high cliffs, wide vistas, and sharp turns that can make a person right queasy. That’s about where we were at sunset - on a cliff over the ocean, in the middle of nowhere, needing to take a little break to let our stomachs settle after hours of hairpin 270s far above the swirling sea.
We pulled off the highway at a wide shoulder. There weren’t any people around; there wasn’t any traffic. There wasn’t anything at all but our dusty little car, our road-addled selves, the cliff and the highway and the sea – into which the reddened sun was just starting to sink. The sky was so blue it was almost purple, cloudless and crisp.
“I think,” I told Kel, “we might see the flash.”
The green flash occurs at the moment that the sun is reduced to a single beam casting over the horizon. If the air is clear and the horizon is flat and nothing else gets in the way, that one ray of white light will refract out into all the spectral hues. But R-O-Y get absorbed back into the sky, and B-I-V soak down into the ground.... The only one you can see, for just an instant, is G: Green. For a fraction of a second, the green flash lights the horizon – and then disappears with (or into) the sun that produced it. I’d been waiting a long time for all the elements to come together, but this crystal evening I could feel my chance approaching. Every indicator was propitious.
We looked askance at the horizon, protecting our eyes’ sensitivity as the sun, blushing darker by the second, flattened itself into the sea. The less sun there was, the more directly we could view it. Eventually, when it was nearly gone, we both keenly watched it finish its descent, a daily spectacle so majestic that I almost never notice it on ordinary occasions. But this was no ordinary occasion - we were standing at the edge of the world, peering into an uncertain future for possibilities too vast to grasp, sure only of the road under our feet, each other’s company, and a mote of pure light that shrank visibly before us.
I knew the crucial moment would soon be upon us. I wanted to say something but no words came. Instead, came the flash. So quick, so clean, so piercing - an emerald of pure light. It lit our faces, filled my eyes and washed clear my mind. It was over in a fraction of a second but we’d both seen it, well and truly.
“I saw it.”
“Me too.”
“Beautiful.”
“Amazing.” Then, without further commentary, we got back into the car and resumed driving, not so much refreshed as renewed. We drove through the night. A week later, we drove back south again. And since then we’ve been all over the place. Many years and uncountable miles have stacked up between that moment and my life now. But though it had hardly lasted for the blink of an eye, that green flash still shines for me today.
