Cheerful Desolation

This evening was so pretty as I walked/ trekked from my apartment to the library to check out almost a dozen books on Tolkien (note: not by Tolkien). Yesterday and this morning were very unpromising. Yesterday was filled with humidity thick enough to slice through and this morning was chilly and cloudy. And then came the inevitable rain because we don't seem to go a day without rain unless that day would be markedly better with it. But this evening- this evening was gorgeous.

I walked outside and it was cool and the water in the air wasn't intrusive but welcome. The sun was in its last throes of the day and giving off light instead of heat. Baylor even smelt good. Houston doesn't smell good after an midday shower. Too much heat and dirt and grime pollute the refreshment that the rain brings, but Baylor actually had a sweet smell. Mowed grass with rain, but mowed long enough ago that its not pungent, but a nice reminder.

Sunset has always been that way for me. I'm not a sunrise type of gal. It's too early and too bright, intruding in on my dreams. We always talk about sunrise as the promise of a new day, but all I see it as is the promise that I have to wake up walk across campus and sit in class and then walk back across campus and do homework. Sunset, though, isn't the closing of a day but the fulfillment of it. I look out and see the world shutting down one shift as another starts... one filled with lightning bugs and stars. And those glimmers of light in the darkness is my promise of a brand new day, that even when the rest of the world is turning in there is still a spectrum of life just emerging to keep the world going.