May 6, 2009 Just some old man's rambling of a God-made California Scene of Wonder... I need to be writing about stuff before it goes away.... After a couple of rainy days, including this morning, the afternoon opened up to one of the very stunning reasons why we live in the Bay Area. Yes, even though we endure a tremendous handicap in terms of cost of living, traffic and housing cost…..there is nothing more beautiful than a beautiful day in California's San Francisco Bay Area. I got home this afternoon about 5:00PM. The ambient temperature was about 68 degrees - the sky had cleared and fluffy cumulous nimbus clouds lay solidly across the east bay hills. To the west, the slant of the setting sun set the westerly clouds aglow and enveloped the coastal mountains in a sweet, soft afternoon delight of light that cascaded across the bay and on to the green and fertile east bay hills. To the west and across the Bay water, there was the ever present ocean fog, just barely kissing the peaks of the western coastal hills…..it was back lit by the warm glow of the sunset turning gray clouds shiny silver. And now, the day's warm sun moved into the soft and waiting darkness of the Pacific Ocean moving rapidly to bring a new and beautiful morning to the west and beyond. My Goodness! The air was as fresh and as wonderfully scented as the laws of nature would allow. As Arthur Miller's John Procter said in The Crucible "On Sunday let you come with me, and we'll walk the farm together; I never see such a load of flowers on the earth - Lilacs have a purple smell. Lilac is the smell of nightfall, I think. Massachusetts is a beauty in the spring!" and she merely replied with, "Aye, it is." I full well remember speaking those lines in our high school presentation of the Crucible. This evening was no less brilliant than the spring eve Arthur Miller was describing……..an evening and event of softness, and spring gentleness that is hard to describe and harder to capture in words. Sometimes, the way the sun light filters between clouds is nothing less than magic. The way it cascades across the green and gold hills is illuminating and nearly beyond imagination. Everything that the angled and setting sun touches is stuff of which dreams are made. Truly, this was one of those godly crafted evenings, the type of which I have always tried, in vain, to burn into my memory for all time. In general, the environmental conditions of the evening could not have been more perfect. Certainly, in this moment, I could have wished for a great deal of unessential human desire….but ultimately, I felt so energized and blessed by the beauty of the evening - the freshness and joy of spring …..That I could only drink it in, absorb it and thank the powers of the universe that I still retain the ability to appreciate the richness, the marvel, the magic of the human experience as we move through our environment and life. - Clint Paxton - Submitted 6 May 2009 © 2009 - Clint Paxton, All Rights Reserved