The Genuflection of the Moment
August 31st, 2008
There is a drifting and a falling that seizes time when the sun is setting and a summer is becoming an autumn and the heat of a day is fraying into the cold of a night. Each moment then genuflects to the circling of the sun and of the seasons, and their adoration makes us all the hushed attendants of a mystery. This time disdains all measure, passing with the incalculable rhythm of rustling leaves and blowing grasses and singing insects and cresting waves, finding the hollows and the spaces of the dimmed day. Such moments are marked only in their passing. They leave no inheritance. Without memory or remainder, they are only the splendid instant of their worship.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
There is a verb for this, ‘advesperate,’ meaning “to approach evening,” the moment when day turns to night. I know this because I’m reading a wonderful book that I’ll lend you when I’m done, Ammon Shea’s “Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.”. That it is so named, and present in the OED, is like a picture of a million sunsets, and it made me so happy to read it that I had to pause and put the book down.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:27 am
Dave, considering the root of the word ‘advesperate’, it may interest you to know that I wrote this little reflection at a place we call Vesper Point.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:33 am
Surely that is no coincidence. I love it!