This Time of Year the Sun is setting at the horizon right in between the two trees across the street – and I get a private sunset show from my living room. How quickly she – die Sonne – is sinking and disappearing across the shiny bay into the Marin hills. And then I imagine her – yes in German the sun is a she – diving into the ocean very soon after that, and the sky gets to glow in variations of pink, deep red, orange... as if to applause. The sun never sets in exactly the same spot, in the summer much further to the right, in winter much further to the left behind the Golden Gate Bridge, and for this sunset show I will walk to the nearby outlook with a better view. 

Dusk falls softly and soothes the senses, without any spectacular cloud illuminations this evening, and yet the fading light is enveloping the world in a palpable embrace. Applause rises from below for the African Band playing live music down the hill somewhere (at a private birthday party perhaps?)... Now the light turns intensely golden, colors of trees and bay start to fade into dark silhouettes. The air is balmy, fragrant, and utterly luxurious after a hot day. I stretch my limbs. An intensity of feeling is rising in my heart, and in ripples is dispersing outward to my skin – wonder and gratitude mingling, prickling, glittering. Is that what it means? To stay still and wide open, beholding the terrifying beauty of this magic show, drinking the darkening of blue sky, the ever more intense orange, yellow, green at the horizon... not running from it... My bamboo chimes rhythmically marking time in the gentle breeze... in this tender flow of change nothing is fixed, everything breathes in the unknown, breathes out and surrenders.... in die Nacht.... into the night....