Sunburned

The sun rises. The sun sets. But it never does, actually. It is the earth's heavenly movement that creates this illusion; one of nature's greatest and most repeated magic tricks. When I lived in New York I used to drive to the water to see the sun set. I had to, or else buildings would be in my way. In that city concrete and cement tower over trees. I would drive alone, in my father's white Chevy Malibu, accompanied only by the car-stereo and the coming dark. Standing outside the door with the radio gently humming, the fading light warm against my skin, a soft orange vanishing where the sea met the sky, I would watch and think about something akin to infinity; hoping that concealed in the last glimmering sunbeam I might find some secret truth. The thought of extinction would sometimes visit me, usually while imagining time unfolding a few billions of years into the future, at the point when our sun collapses. Stars die, some of them peacefully, with resignation, and others violently, with explosive finality: one last super-luminous lament.

There was beauty in this. The notion that everything was unified by life and death and time made me feel I was part of some cosmic expansion and collapse, like the respiration of an interstellar lung. For as long as I can remember, the setting sun had always been a paradox to me: in between day and night, light and dark, birth and death. The moment hangs on the horizon with all the ephemeral tenacity and light of a human life. When it was cloudy, especially during autumn and winter months, the sky took on a different, more contemplative tone. Painted in the colors of fallen leaves, in lustrous yellows, fresh rust and vibrant burgundy, the white of the sky looked to be draped by a tablecloth set aside for Thanksgiving dinner.

One day, a friend had come along to accompany me. It was in the summer, sometime in July. The humidity in New York in July can be brutal. It stirs something inside that's immediately sticky and intemperate, almost amphibious; attracts flies. So we sat by the water, with the brusque dusk, stalked by swarming gnats and far off fireflies, waiting for the night. We'd bought a six-pack of Mike's Hard Iced Tea, the preferred choice for two sixteen-year-old boys who were still transitioning from soda to beer, and we twisted off the tops. The adult in me would like to think we kept the empty bottles in the cardboard case when we'd finished them, but the youth in me suspects we chucked them into the water to destroy the evidence (should we be accosted by a passing cop). After a few drinks we'd start to get philosophical and talk about the future, try to figure out what it all meant. We tried to imagine where we'd be, what we'd do with our lives, whether we'd still be friends. The future stretched out as long as the horizon, and as deep. There were never any answers though, only shadows, glimpses, intimations.

Once, driving on a deserted road, enclosed on each side by overhanging trees, we'd seen a ghost. We reminisced and wondered what might happen when we die. The idea of nothing was troubling; something, doubly. Leaving, there was always the feeling that I'd learned something; something swirling and vast. It was as though a piece of the sun had been buried behind my eyes.

Sometimes, if I blink just right, I can still see the imprint of a fiery green ghost drifting down the backs of my eyelids.