the setting sun
May. 20th, 2009 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bonny_kateThis isn't a story, exactly, but more of a sketch.
I collect sunsets. I press their substance between the thin pages of a thesaurus or dictionary, or on occasion the thick pages of whatever slim novel I've slipped in my purse to read in odd moments (in the elevator, at stoplights, in the waiting). They fade and flatten, like flowers, but something of their beauty is retained, a hint and a memory. Press a violet or a rose petal and you will lose something of the beauty of the flower, the colors will gently leach away, but there will yet remain a hint and memory of scent that will awaken memory. It is the same with sunsets. A pressed sunset is more like the memory of a sunset; the fire has faded a little, the clouds are less white, perhaps, but yet the faded substance will waken the memory of the thing itself. They make me smile, these sunsets.
My cousin collects sunrises. She puts a drop of ether upon their hearts, and then pushes a straight pin through it to hang in neat rows upon corkboard. Her sunrises are more lifelike; they do not fade as quickly as my sunsets. Yet because she has impaled its heart, I think her sunrise loses that inexpressible something that causes us to sigh or sit in silence before beauty. They are beautiful, and they are dead, her sunrises. By trying to preserve in perfection she has captured the details and lost the essence. Their souls have fled her straight pins, but yet the souls of sunsets linger in sweet scents upon the pages of my books, because I have not sought to posses them, merely to remember.
I collect sunsets. I press their substance between the thin pages of a thesaurus or dictionary, or on occasion the thick pages of whatever slim novel I've slipped in my purse to read in odd moments (in the elevator, at stoplights, in the waiting). They fade and flatten, like flowers, but something of their beauty is retained, a hint and a memory. Press a violet or a rose petal and you will lose something of the beauty of the flower, the colors will gently leach away, but there will yet remain a hint and memory of scent that will awaken memory. It is the same with sunsets. A pressed sunset is more like the memory of a sunset; the fire has faded a little, the clouds are less white, perhaps, but yet the faded substance will waken the memory of the thing itself. They make me smile, these sunsets.
My cousin collects sunrises. She puts a drop of ether upon their hearts, and then pushes a straight pin through it to hang in neat rows upon corkboard. Her sunrises are more lifelike; they do not fade as quickly as my sunsets. Yet because she has impaled its heart, I think her sunrise loses that inexpressible something that causes us to sigh or sit in silence before beauty. They are beautiful, and they are dead, her sunrises. By trying to preserve in perfection she has captured the details and lost the essence. Their souls have fled her straight pins, but yet the souls of sunsets linger in sweet scents upon the pages of my books, because I have not sought to posses them, merely to remember.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-21 02:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-21 05:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-21 03:25 am (UTC)Except for the point when you refer to sunsets as sunrises somewhere in the second paragraph. I noticed it as I read but cannot seem to place it now... But, you know, the concepts are perfect and perfectly expressed...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-21 05:23 am (UTC)