The Thirteenth Hour
Copyright 2005 by Jonas T. Richardson

The colors ran, but never in a way that made you want to separate them. The sky was lit with the low sunset tones that usually accompany a romantic walk on the beach, or some other great place to watch a sunset. Tonight could have been different. In another world, another life, at another time. It could have been a romantic sunset, but tonight it was just…well, it was beautiful.

But then again, romance wasn’t the most important thing in the world, was it? But then again, it sure had the power to feel like it was. Gee, better switch to the scientific side of the mind for a while… A sunset. A fracturing of light, nothing more. No paintbrush, just a washing machine swishing the colors like so many blue jeans and Hawaiian shirts. It was a process that was always run the same, even if it yielded varying results. A used car, a shrinky-dink, a leftover tossed salad. A formula, not a work of art.

Sunsets were much more vivid like this as winter gave way to spring. For no other reason, of course, than the changes that temperature and earth’s angle brought to the humidity of the air, the level that determined the sizes, shapes, and quantity of the clouds that now dotted the sky like so many gauges and dials.

There was beauty, if it is to be measured, present in tonight’s sky. But then again, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it can merely be explained as an electrochemical interpretation to a perception of the optical nerve. Sure, the pupil enlarges up to 30% when it sees something it likes, but there is nothing to measure beauty except the eye of the beholder. A sunset was relaxing in color, and often associated with emotional, hormonal and endorphin releases that make one “feel” “better”. That was why the eye liked tonight’s colors. Nothing more.
The relaxing clouds were merging into a massage of colors, the way the TV blurs when you fall asleep in a leather recliner.

Sure, there was a time when science didn’t explain everything. When existentialism, philosophy, and the space-time continuum didn’t walk hand in hand in life. A time when sunsets were shared for their company, when it didn’t matter what beauty meant, or what associations were made between activities and nature. Certainly there was a time when the left side of the brain merely added to and enhanced its crazy sibling on the right. When clouds weren’t made of water, color wasn’t made of light, and love could never be connected to chemistry. What was that time like? It was hard to remember. It would require a trigger to reconnect those tubes. They were separated for a reason: survival. A mind bent on senseless romance could never survive the…well, it just wasn’t a smart thing to attempt in this particular situation. Not tonight. Wait for the trigger to return…

Equinox was a few weeks past. Colors worked better together after Equinox. At about one hour’s sunsets worth past Equinox, when there was 13 hours of light and 11 hours of night. That thirteenth hour was always colorful.
There was no scientific explanation for that.

And 11 hours…well, that was how many hours ahead…she was. Nearly halfway around the globe. That meant that at similar latitudes, during the thirteenth-hour sunset, she was likely watching her very own version of these colors in her sunrise, as she started her day. They were looking the same way, at the same sun, at the same time, and the sun was giving them the same colors. Perhaps that was why the thirteenth-hour sunset was so beautiful. Her sunrise, his sunset. Their colors, their clouds.
The trigger had returned! Clouds were still water, but they were also painted. Color was made of light, but it was their color, their light source. Love had chemical reactions, but it was rooted far deeper than the periodic table. Sunsets were pleasing to the eye because they were pleasing to the heart, and not in a Cheerios sort of way. It wasn’t a scientific explanation, though it was based on one. The heart and the head rarely agree, but on this they did.
Today was indeed different. Tonight was indeed a romantic sunset. Today was lucky 13. When the clock strikes thirteen, the evening sky is ours.



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