The blue hour

I’ll begin Slow Quiet by writing about one of my favorite things: twilight. This period of gradual change is a lovely buffer, a transition zone between full light and full dark. I’m most familiar with evening twilight, when the golden hour before sunset slowly yields to deepening blue, and the shadow of Earth rises in the east.

The French expression entre chien et loup captures the liminality of twilight. It refers to the difficulty of telling a dog from a wolf after sunset. This uncertainty would have been profoundly unsettling in the days when wolves were a threat to people, especially benighted travelers.

When I was a child, I was sometimes frightened by the in-betweenness of early evening. I remember an overwhelming feeling of lostness and disconnection that occurred only at this time of day and that I could never explain or even describe. Still, I loved the night, with its moon and stars. I also loved the times I was awake after everyone else had gone to sleep. Night was the farthest I could get from other people’s expectations.

Eventually I became not just reconciled to twilight but enamored of it. I’ve been fascinated by transitions for a very long time, the way that moments of time that don’t seem to differ greatly can somehow carry you to a very different setting. During morning and evening twilight, change is written most clearly in the sky. It moves slowly enough to be observed, and it produces some of the most beautiful colors that appear in the sky.

Another thing I appreciate about twilight, especially in the warmer months, is the relief from glaring sunshine and heat. I grew up in the desert, and I think one reason Arizona has never adopted Daylight Saving Time is that sunset there can be such a relief. Edward Abbey described this relief well: “Life began to seem plausible again after an afternoon of doubt.”

For most of my adult life, evening meant the end of work and school; if I had any schoolwork left, at least I could do it at home. For me, the sense of loosening and relaxation around twilight suggests an alternative interpretation of the dog and the wolf. Twilight is when I let my domesticated daylight self slip the leash, and I slowly return to a less constrained form. Here’s something I wrote earlier this year along those lines.

Unfold

The world sent me a message this morning. It said: “Hello there, square peg. You haven’t been making much effort to fit in lately. Here’s a nice round hole you might be able to squash yourself into. What do you say?”

And in the evening, life said to me: “Here are trees and sunset, twilight, moon, planets. Here are books, poems, pens and paper. Unfold into whatever shape you are tonight. Here is room for all your odd angles.”

A few good things

What I’m reading: Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology, by Andreas Weber. This book expresses a view of humans in nature that is an antidote to the standard view in Western industrialized countries: “The world is not populated by singular, autonomous, sovereign beings. It comprises a constantly oscillating network of dynamic interactions in which one thing changes through the change of another. The relationship counts, not the substance.”

What I’m enjoying: The harvest moon! The last three or four nights have been moonlit and beautiful. Monday morning I went outside around 5:30 and saw Venus, dazzlingly bright, low in the east. Orion and the other constellations we see on winter evenings are in the predawn sky this time of year, indicating the upcoming change of season. High in the southwest, I saw the waning moon not far from the bright planet Jupiter. Crickets were singing, and the air was cool. It was a good way to start the week.

Wishing you beauty and peace,

Mary

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