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| Post-sunset sky behind Murano lighthouse, last night |
I was reminded last night, once again, that the spectacle of sunset in the lagoon is not over after you've watched the orange disk drop beneath the horizon as definitively--and almost audibly it can sometimes seem--as a coin into the slot of a vending machine. The above image was taken some time after that had happened, and it indicates the kind of "prize" all of us here receive after the sky's flaming coin has dropped out of sight.
And this reminded me of when I first noticed this fact in the lagoon, about 6 years ago, in a different boat than the one we have now, in December. Rather than plagiarize myself, I'll just re-post the original post from December 20, 2014:
Sandro is disappointed when I don't pick him up from school in the boat,
which, in truth, is most of the time, especially these days when the
sun sets shortly after 4:30. As I use the boat to pick him up on one of
his two long days of school each week, when he gets out at 3:45, this
means it's typically pretty dark when we get home. And cold.
At this time of year the days disappear fast in the west, the light,
color and special effects changing second-by-second as the sun slips
downward like a rain drop on a car windshield. But hardly had the
western horizon gone dark the other day and Sandro and I set off
homeward in earnest from the detour we'd taken out behind the island of
San Giorgio Maggiore, my camera safely stowed in its water-proof bag,
than we noticed all at once behind us an encore, blooming in broad
ragged folds of electric pink from the southern horizon beyond Isola
Santo Spirito almost to the top of the sky's dome.
On many winter evenings, even at the close of days when the sun has
seemed too weary and infirm to shuffle out from behind a thick gray
velvet curtain of clouds, sunset still turns out to be a two-act
performance, with more to come--and often the most drama of all--after
you think the show's over. The sun has surely vanished below the horizon
line, you think, and only then, after the big headlining star has left
the building, so to speak, does some obscure chorus line of clouds in
some forgotten quadrant of the sky--way off to the east over Lido,
even--cast off their coverings and put on their own closing number,
flushing all over with their effort.
It's almost hard to believe your eyes, which had just been adjusting to
the featureless dark, yet the width of the lagoon before you mirrors the
sky's flaming pageantry--as did, the night before last, Sandro's face.
Living here and seeing the sky every day and night you realize that the
great architects of Venice did not, as is sometimes suggested, construct
drama in a wide waste of water otherwise devoid of it, but in the face
of the stiffest natural competition. The lagoon was not merely the flat,
passive, perfect foil for architectural effort, but a potentially
overwhelming stage whose own natural effects were likely to make any
uninspired efforts of builders look very small indeed.
All of which are reasons for me to take the boat to pick up Sandro from
school more often, even in the coldest weather, even in the supposed
dead of winter. Or, if you're visiting the city, for you to seek out an
unobscured vantage point at the end of each day from which to take in
the sky's theater.
