in which we apologize for being diverted by dusk

Q. Shenaynay

The Beehive has been less buzzish here of late, as many of you have noted. So okay, we rested a bit after our trip and took a little break to get life back in the groove. And frankly, we've just needed some quiet space to ruminate on things -- we found out that trips to Great Britain cause one to need a lot more thinking time for proper digestion than we anticipated.

But I think we're about ready to climb back on the blog wagon now, so get ready for a few posts about Scotland and England -- we're trying to select a handful of pictures to post from a stack of... gulp... about a thousand snapshots.

I confess we've noticed during this little quasi-sabbatical from blogging that it's harder to blog indoors when it's springtime outdoors. It's soon to get too stifling hot here in Texas to just be out-of-doors without being conscious of the discomfort of frying skin and air too heavy to breathe, not to mention vampirish mosquitos. So April is not to be squandered.

I love April, and I love that time of day when the sky starts melting into the fuzzy drama of dusk. For just a half-hour or so, the light particles that illuminate my little fallen corner of the world breathe a sigh of relief, intoxicated with gold under the momentary canopy of something so glorious it seems out of place suspended as it is above all the confusion writhing beneath it. And where else in nature does God give us that intense azure blue that creeps over the eastern horizon -- can a color be more arresting and deep than that? The indigo of dusk is the color of endlessness. I can't fathom it.

I love dusk so much that I wish God would slow down the sun for that little span of time and let me enjoy it longer. But then I realize I enjoy it so much because I know I must stop for it because it will not stop for me.

So in that hour of the day when we might otherwise be blogging, instead we've been out walking and talking and trying to understand indigo, and thinking about how mockingbirds edify our sidewalk atmosphere so much more than grackles and how the neighborhood dove couple that we always see together and cooing seems far more content than that solitary yellow-bellied sapsucker of a woodpecker who comes around pecking himself senseless.

And thinking about how light is a mystery that we keep trying to explain though we cannot understand it.

That -- all of that -- is a very good thing.

(I forgot how much I enjoy blogging. Good to be back.)