Choosing Light...

sWhile I am tempted to reflect on how utterly impossible this past year and half has been - I am going to forego that impulse to reflect on a moment of grace and time spent, quite literally, in the golden hour.

A perfect hour - warm breezes after months of triple digit heat, air cleared by a freak rainstorm after weeks of smoke laden AQIs, and the beauty of the mountain literally glistening gold in the light. 

I think of Tanizaki's writings - Praise to Shadows and his appreciation of nuance as a form of mindfulness.

"Junichiro Tanizaki selects for praise all things delicate and nuanced, everything softened by shadows and the patina of age, anything understated and natural—as for example the patterns of grain in old wood, the sound of rain dripping from eaves and leaves, or washing over the footing of a stone lantern in a garden, and refreshing the moss that grows about it – and by doing so he suggests an attitude of appreciation and mindfulness, especially mindfulness of beauty, as central to life lived well."

I suspect the beauty of these moments of light is made more poignant because of the months, and continued threats, of darkness.