Sunset Driving Quotes

You are enough to drive a saint to madness or a king to his knees.

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.

I want the late-night drives, the sunset watching, the screaming, the yelling, and the crying. I know I'll definitely want the make-up sex that comes after all of the screaming and crying. I want the good, the bad, and the in-between. All of it is what's going to make us amazing together.

I want it all, Emily. I want to spend my nights holding hands with you,” he breathed the words into her ear. “I want the all-day texting.” He kissed her temple and caressed her cheek. “I want the laughing and the forehead kisses.” He softly ran his lips over her forehead. “I want the date nights, the movie watching, and the breakfast making.” He dragged his hands through her hair, his teeth tugging gently at her bottom lip. “I want the late-night drives, the sunset watching, the screaming, the yelling, and the crying.” Still kissing her, he smiled against her mouth. “I know I’ll definitely want the make up sex that comes after the screaming and the crying. In want the good, the bad and e in between. All of it is what's going to make us amazing together,

No matter even if you are cold, I like you better than anybody in the world. One time I said that you were my soul. And that still goes. You're all the things that I see in a sunset when I'm driving in from the country, the things that I like but can't make poetry of.

You are enough to drive a saint to madness or a king to his knees Excerpt from To Kiss a King by Grace Willows Coming this summer to Amazon Kindle and paperback.

he was sporting a leather jacket and a five o’clock shadow that made you want to defy your parents, jump on the back of his motorcycle, and let him drive you off into the sunset after having had his name tattooed somewhere on your body.

Yadriel wanted to chase down the sunset. To not let it rise. How long after he was gone would Yadriel be dreaming about Julian and this drive? Yadriel thought it would be worth the sleepless nights ahead.

Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive it to her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it was a longboat or a three-decked vessel, loaded with anguish or filled with happiness up to the portholes. But each morning, when she awoke, she hoped it would arrive that day, and she would listen to every sound, spring to her feet, feel surprised that it had not come; then at sunset, always more sorrowful, she would wish the next day were already there.

Please forgive me for fighting against us, Gavin. Please forgive me for not fighting for us when I knew we were supposed to be together. Forgive me for being the weak mess I am. But more than anything… thank you for loving me. Thank you for your dimpled smile and your bottle caps. I’ll never be able to look at one without thinking of you. Thank you for your stupid Yankees and your wiseass remarks. Thank you for wanting late night drives and sunset-watching with me. Thank you for wanting the good, the bad, and the in-between.

And you do know the ending of your book.” I looked at her questioningly. “She drives off into the sunset to live exactly how she wants.

drive past Stansbury and make a right onto Ventura and let it take me through Studio City, where the boulevard became Cahuenga, and then head into Hollywood, cruising along Sunset until I hit Beverly Glen

I CANNOT tell you now; When the wind's drive and whirl Blow me along no longer, And the wind's a whisper at last-- Maybe I'll tell you then-- some other time. When the rose's flash to the sunset Reels to the rack and the twist, And the rose is a red bygone, When the face I love is going And the gate to the end shall clang, And it's no use to beckon or say, "So long"-- Maybe I'll tell you then-- some other time. I never knew any more beautiful than you: I have hunted you under my thoughts, I have broken down under the wind And into the roses looking for you. I shall never find any greater than you.

There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical. And he never goes on sitting there after sunset, with the whole place getting dark.

I’m not having much of a life. It’s not awful, just ordinary. I am trying to accommodate the memories of the life I had with the life I am now living, and I just can’t do it. After being behind the wheel of a Lamborghini going 140 down Sunset Drive at four a.m., it’s hard to get up and put on a polyester shirt and sell books at Barnes and Noble. But I’m not ashamed of it.

Best not to look back. Best to believe there will be happily ever afters all the way around- and so there may be; who is to say there will to be such endings? Not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again, or the hand of another child; if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question… And if you spare a last though, maybe it’s ghosts you wonder about… the ghosts of children standing in the water at sunset, standing in a circle, standing with their hands joined together, their faces young, sure, but tough… tough enough, anyway, to give birth to the people they will become, tough enough understand, maybe, that the people they will become must necessarily birth the people they were before they can get on with trying to understand simple morality. The circle closes, the wheel rolls, and that’s all there is. You don’t have to look back to see those children; part of you mind wills them forever, live with them forever, love with them forever. They are not necessarily the best part of you, but were once the repository of all you could become. Children I love you. I love you so much. So drive away quick, drive away while the last of the light slips away,drive away from Derry, from memory… but not from desire. That stays, the bright cameo of all we were and all we believed as children, all that shone in our eyes even when we were lost and the wind blew in the night. Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.

A year ago, I was at a dinner in Amsterdam when the question came up of whether each of us loved his or her country. The German shuddered, the Dutch were equivocal, the Brit said he was "comfortable" with Britain, the expatriate American said no. And I said yes. Driving across the arid lands, the red lands, I wondered what it was I loved. the places, the sagebrush basins, the rivers digging themselves deep canyons through arid lands, the incomparable cloud formations of summer monsoons, the way the underside of clouds turns the same blue as the underside of a great blue heron's wings when the storm is about to break. Beyond that, for anything you can say about the United States, you can also say the opposite: we're rootless except we're also the Hopi, who haven't moved in several centuries; we're violent except we're also the Franciscans nonviolently resisting nucelar weapons out here; we're consumers except the West is studded with visionary environmentalists...and the landscape of the West seems like the stage on which such dramas are played out, a space without boundaries, in which anything can be realized, a moral ground, out here where your shadow can stretch hundreds of feet just before sunset, where you loom large, and lonely.

We shall drive ever forward along this line until all our citizens have above-average incomes!

People like me don’t drive off happily into the sunset. We careen down jagged cliff sides.  

Here's a note to the parents of addicted children: choose your music carefully. Avoid Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World", from the Polaroid or Kodak or whichever commercial, and the songs "Turn Around" and "Sunrise, Sunset" and - there are thousands more. Avoid Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," and this one, Eric Clapton's song about his son. Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" sneaked up on me one time. The music doesn't have to be sentimental. Springsteen can be dangerous. John and Yoko. Bjork. Dylan. I become overwhelmed when I hear Nirvana. I want to scream like Kurt Cobain. I want to scream at him. Music isn't all that does it. There are millions of treacherous moments. Driving along Highway 1, I will see a peeling wave. Or I will reach the fork where two roads meet near Rancho Nicasio, where we veered to the left in carpool. A shooting star on a still night at the crest of Olema Hill. With friends, I hear a good joke - one that Nic would appreciate. The kids do something funny or endearing. A story. A worn sweater. A movie. Feeling wind and looking up, riding my bike. A million moments.

The Place of God’s Justifiable Wrath How horrible is this echo? Let’s take a look at Matthew 18:8–9: And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. This passage, by the way, doesn’t just give us the comparative negative of hell, but it translates really well into a theology of suffering. With these words of Jesus in mind, I can now know that it is better never to hold my children, it is better never to run my fingers through my wife’s hair, it is better not to be able to brush my own teeth, it is better never to be able to drive a car, it is better to be paralyzed and never feel anything from the neck down, and it is better to have stage III anaplastic oligodendroglioma than to find myself outside the kingdom of God. It is better never to see the sunset or the sunrise, never see the stars in the sky, never to see my daughter in her little dress-up clothes, never to see my son throw a ball—it is better never to have seen those things than to have seen those things and yet end up outside the kingdom of God.

Don't forget to get away every once in awhile, To lose yourself in a book Or in the woods behind your home Ride your bike into the sunset, Sit on your front steps and count the cars passing by, Lay on your roof and gaze up at the night sky, Drive along backroads with the windows rolled down Listening to nothing but the sound of rushing wind I hope you take the time to be alone, To sort through the cluttered shelves of your heart I hope you take the time to be silent, To close your eyes and just listen I hope you take the time to be still, To quiet your mind and experience the beauty Of simply Being

An astoundingly perfect black void sat where the sun had been, surrounded by a jagged white nimbus of light that nearly brought me to tears. This was the solar corona, the hot outer edges of the sun's atmosphere that drive a flood of particles into space and generate a phenomenon known as a stellar wind, a key property of how our sun and other stars evolve. I had studied this particular aspect of stars for almost my entire life, using a dozen of the best telescopes in the world, but this was the first time I could see a star's wind with my own naked-eye. Around us, the sky was a strangely uniform dome of sunsets in every direction, and the warmth of sunlight had been replaced by an almost primal up-the-neck chill. It felt like the planet itself had been put on pause at this particular place and moment in time, a frozen moment of "look.

To the Harbormaster" I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart. In storms and at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide around my fathomless arms, I am unable to understand the forms of my vanity or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder in my hand and the sun sinking. To you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage of my will. The terrible channels where the wind drives me against the brown lips of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet I trust the sanity of my vessel; and if it sinks, it may well be in answer to the reasoning of the eternal voices, the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

We drove slowly, neither of us speaking, and worked our way out of the Marina, up through Venice, and along the beach. It was automatic driving, going through the motions without conscious thought or direction, movement without destination or design. Pike hunkered low in the passenger’s seat, his face dark in the bright sun, his dark lenses somehow molten and angry. It is not good to see Joe Pike angry. Better to see a male lion charge at close quarters. Better to hear someone scream, “Incoming!

Even when I was a boy I could never walk in a wood without feeling that at any moment I might find before me somebody or something I had long looked for without knowing what I looked for. And now I will at times explore every little nook of some poor coppice with almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me. You too meet with a like imagination, doubtless, somewhere, wherever your ruling stars will have it, Saturn driving you to the woods, or the Moon, it may be, to the edges of the sea. I will not of a certainty believe that there is nothing in the sunset, where our forefathers imagined the dead following their shepherd the sun, or nothing but some vague presence as little moving as nothing. If beauty is not a gateway out of the net we were taken in at our birth, it will not long be beauty, and we will find it better to sit at home by the fire and fatten a lazy body or to run hither and thither in some foolish sport than to look at the finest show that light and shadow ever made among green leaves. I say to myself, when I am well out of that thicket of argument, that they are surely there, the divine people, for only we who have neither simplicity nor wisdom have denied them, and the simple of all times and the wise men of ancient times have seen them and even spoken to them.

The things most people took for granted were the things I made sure to pay special attention to: sunrises and sunsets; driving with the top down—or just driving at all; being able to wake up and know that it was safe to play outside with the kids, and, in a world populated by dictators and strewn with war zones, I wasn’t surrounded by any of them.

Save his own soul’s light overhead, None leads him, and none ever led, Across birth’s hidden harbour-bar, Past youth where shoreward shallows are, Through age that drives on toward the red Vast void of sunset hailed from far, To the equal waters of the dead; Save his own soul he hath no star, And sinks, except his own soul guide, Helmless in middle turn of tide.

The "Avenue," so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle. Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. She leaned back in the buggy, her thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to the white splendor above. Even when they had passed out and were driving down the long slope to Newbridge she never moved or spoke. Still with rapt face she gazed afar into the sunset west, with eyes that saw visions trooping splendidly across that glowing background. Through Newbridge, a bustling little village where dogs barked at them and small boys hooted and curious faces peered from the windows, they drove, still in silence. When three more miles had dropped away behind them the child had not spoken. She could keep silence, it was evident, as energetically as she could talk.

At any given moment, millions of systems are at work all around us. The blood pumping through our veins. The planets. The food chain. They're all super-specific systems linked to one another. Some of the systems occur organically as a greater part of the universe, like surprises and sunsets. But others are just made-up. Like, why is the school day eight hours long? And why is it that, even though I'm the smartest person in the world, I can't vote? The arbitrariness of it all is the thing that drives me nuts.

He had decided before the accident not to chase them anymore, but the circumstances of the accident made him fear for Lilia's safety. he would never bring her in, not anymore; all he wanted now was to watch over her. Michaela had been reading his notes for years, but his notes were only part of it: the other part was the way he woke up at night in his bed in Montreal and knew where Lilia was, the way he could glance at a map of the United Staes and realize with absolute, inexplicable certainty that she was in West Virginia, the way he tried to ignore his terrifying clairvoyance and forget where she was and couldn't, the way he knew where she was but had to keep driving south to check, the horror of always being right: he saw her face in the crowd on Sunset Boulevard, he stepped into a hardware store in St. Louis at the moment she stepped out of the deli across the street, he stood on a corner in a run-down neighborhood in Chicago and watched her emerge from an apartment building down the block. After each sighting he returned north more depleted, more frightened, less intact.

I love the ocean. My perfect day is spent riding waves at the beach, preferably early in the morning or just before sunset, when the light is beautiful and the crowds are sparse. I've loved the ocean my whole life. Some of my greatest memories are of piling in the station wagon with my family for a long drive to the beach, where we'd spend the day swimming, playing in the sand, digging for clams, or combing the shore for shells. I've always been taken by the majesty of the sea; the mystery of the unseen world below; and the calming, rhythmic sound of the waves.

I may love the great outdoors in winter, but even I draw the line at sunset. When November comes, I have no desire to leave the house after dark. My instinct is to hibernate the evenings away. I hate those strange walks along the high street, lit only by street lamps and the glow of shop windows, the cold seeping up your coat sleeves. I don’t like the way that 4 o’clock can feel so desolate, the air damp without the corrective force of the sun./ The very thought of driving seems nightmarish – those impenetrable roads their edges uncertain; the dance you have to perform with the full beam, flicking it on and off, on and off. Far better to stay at home.

Russel Simmons If you sit, and the thoughts settle, and the noise disappears, then you see all God’s beauty. Those people who are fully awake see all the sunsets. You drive your car, you see every flower. It promotes a lasting, stable, happy relationship with the world. And so if you meditate, you’ll be a happier, more stable person. You will be more productive. Because if you’re awake and present and thoughtful, you’re good at your job. And you’re a good giver. And also, having that kind of focus, that single point of focus it takes when you’re working and when you’re engaged, is the real thing that promotes happiness on its own. And then the things come as a result.

Finally, I have come to realise that an imperfect Life is actually the most perfect Life. I have come to see how Life is beautiful in all its colours, more so because the shades of grey bind them and paint them with even more radiance. A clear sky is always beautiful but what if we never have rain or storm? Sunshine is always wonderful but what if we never have the soothing dusk or the cold night to coil in our own misty self? Storms that come to jolt us often leave us with more courage as we sail along the gust to chase a silver lining. The scorching heat that chokes us often makes us wait more eagerly for that balm of rain. So is Life, in all those moments of sunset we have the hope of the following sunrise, and if we may wait and absorb all that crumbling ray of that sunset we would be able to paint our sunrise with even more crimson smile. Because just like a story, nothing in Life is really concrete without patience. We cannot skip pages of a book because each line contains just so much to seep in, and to have the story fully lived inside our heart and soul we have to keep reading until the very end to feel that sense of peaceful happiness, that always clutches us no matter how the ending is drafted. In the same manner, we have to keep walking through Life, as each and every step of ours leads us to the destination of our Life, the destination of peace, the destination of knowledge of self. The best part of this walk is that it is never a straight line, but is always filled with curves and turns, making us aware of our spirit, laughing loud at times while mourning deep at times. But that is what Life is all about, a bunch of imperfect moments to smile as perfect memories sailing through the potholes of Life, because a straight line even in the world of science means death, after all monotony of perfection is the most cold imperfection. So as we walk through difficult times, may we realise that this sunset is not forever's and that the winter often makes us more aware of the spring. As we drive through a dark night, may we halt for a moment and watch for the stars, the smile of the very stars of gratitude and love that is always there even in the darkest sky of the gloomiest night. As we sail along the ship of Life, may we remember that the winds often guide us to our destination and the storms only come to make our voyage even more adventurous, while the rain clears the cloud so that we may gaze at the full glory of the sky above, with a perfect smile through a voyage of imperfect moments of forever's shine. And so as we keep turning the pages of Life, may we remember to wear that Smile, through every leaf of Life, for Life is rooted in the blooming foliage of its imperfect perfection.

Then he said something about how L.A. is dust and exhaust and the hot, dry wind that sets your nerves on edge and pushes fire up the hillsides in ragged lines like tears in the paper that separates us from hell, and it’s towering clouds of smoke, and it’s sunshine that won’t let up and cool ocean fog that gets unrolled at night over the whole basin like a clean white hospital sheet and peeled back again in the morning. It’s a crescent moon in a sky bruised green after the sunset has beaten the shit out of it. It’s a lazy hammock moon rising over power lines, over the skeletal silhouettes of pylons, over shaggy cypress trees and the spiky black lionfish shapes of palm-tree crowns on too-skinny trunks. It’s the Big One that’s coming to turn the city to rubble and set the rubble on fire but not today, hopefully not today. It’s the obviousness of pointing out that the freeway looks like a ruby bracelet stretched alongside a diamond one, looks like a river of lava flowing counter to a river of champagne bubbles. People talk about the sprawl, and, yeah, the city is a drunk, laughing bitch sprawled across the flats in a spangled dress, legs kicked up the canyons, skirt spread over the hills, and she’s shimmering, vibrating, ticklish with light. Don’t buy a star map. Don’t go driving around gawking because you’re already there, man. You’re in it. It’s all one big map of the stars.

I’m an overthinker. Many of us are. My mind gets racing a thousand miles a minute and I get anxious about my work, my career, or where I need to be in thirty minutes. Every day I need to shut down this machine and simply be still. Be aware of your breathing, really feel your breath going in, going out. Be aware of the feeling of the cloth on your shirt. Be aware of the grip on the steering wheel. Tell yourself--out oud--that the only thing that truly exists right now is this exact moment, and enjoy it, swim in it. Someone once said that your mind is like a raging river that’s full of debris, and when you’re floating in this river, you reach out and try to grab the branches and rocks. But what if you could climb onto the bank and watch the river? Suddenly you’re in a calm place. Maybe it sounds like a cliché to say, “Stop and smell the roses,” so I’ll tell you this instead: “Stop and watch the sunset.” Just the other night, driving home in L.A., I was struck by how beautiful the sky was--a dark blue canvas painted with strokes of bright orange and red. It was truly one of the most glorious sunsets I’d ever seen. I was stuck in traffic, worrying about one thing or another, and I just gazed out the window and drank it in. I let it fill my soul and inspire me. The world stopped revolving for just that split second, and my mind was still and calm. And to think, I could have missed it.

They say that wisdom comes with age. So who could be wiser than the sky, with its eternal sunsets, thunderstorms, stars, galaxies? Who could be wiser than the rocks, these monoliths of stone, witness to all, over the eons of time? There’s an all-knowingness out here. It lies within all this silence and stillness. A wisdom so profound that it transcends words. An understanding so pure it cannot be explained, cannot be taught, nor grasped by the human mind. Only felt. Experienced firsthand. When I tap into this wisdom, a switch is flipped, a reversal happens. My mind, always up front, driving and controlling everything, takes a back seat. And my soul, hiding quietly in the back seat, jumps up to take shotgun.

My mother never seemed to listen to much music, but she loved Barbara Streisand, counting The Way We Were and Yentl as two of her favorite films. I remembered how we used to sing the song "Tell Him" together, and skipped through the album until I found it on track four. "Remember this?" I laughed, turning up the volume. It's a duet between Babe and Celine Dion, two powerhouse divas joining together for one epic track. Celine plays the role of a young woman afraid to confess her feelings to the man she loves, and Barbara is her confidant, encouraging her to take the plunge. "I'm scared, so afraid to show I care... Will he think me weak, if I tremble when I speak?" Celine begins. When I was a kid my mother used to quiver her lower lip for dramatic effect when she sang the word "tremble." We would trade verses in the living room. I was Barbara and she was Celine, the two of us adding interpretive dance and yearning facial expressions to really sell it. "I've been there, with my heart out in my hand..." I'd join in, a trail of chimes punctuating my entrance. "But what you must understand, you can't let the chance to love him pass you by!" I'd exclaim, prancing from side to side, raising my hand to urge my voice upward, showcasing my exaggerated vocal range. Then, together, we'd join in triumphantly. "Tell him! Tell him that the sun and moon rise in his eyes! Reach out to him!" And we'd ballroom dance in a circle along the carpet, staring into each other's eyes as we crooned along to the chorus. My mom let out a soft giggle from the passenger seat and we sang quietly the rest of the way home. Driving out past the clearing just as the sun went down, the scalloped clouds flushed with a deep orange that made it look like magma.

This passage, by the way, doesn't just give us the comparative negative of hell, but it translates well into a theology of suffering. With these words of Jesus in mind, I can now know that it is better never to hold my children, it is better never to run my fingers through my wife's hair, it is better not to be able to brush my own teeth, it is better never to be able to drive a car, it is better to be paralyzed and never feel anything from the neck down, and it is better to have stage III anaplastic oligondendroglioma than to find myself outside the kingdom of God. It is better never to see the sunset or the sunrise, never see the stars in the sky, never to see my daughter in her little dress-up clothes, never to see my son throw a ball - it is better never to have seen those things than to have seen those things and yet end up outside the kingdom of God. How horrible hell must be.

Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” —John 7:24 (NIV) Driving home from work, I glanced into my rearview mirror to see a beautiful pink sky. It looked like another great sunset. I turned onto my street and noticed three young teenage boys hanging out two doors down from where I live. Too bad they won’t notice this great sunset, I thought. I pulled into my driveway and walked inside. My husband, Johnny, called out from the backyard, “Beautiful sunset tonight! Come on out!” The sky had turned a bright crimson red with streaks of leftover pink etched through it. I glanced to where the boys were still talking. “Those boys have no clue that there is a magnificent sunset happening right before their eyes! Too bad,” I said, shaking my head. At that moment, I heard one of them call out, “Hey, guys, check it out! The sky’s all red! It looks awesome!” “Wow!” the others exclaimed in unison. “Cool!” “Oh my,” I said, dismayed, “I sure jumped to a mighty quick conclusion.” Later that evening, I read an inspirational quote that comes daily to my in-box: “When you’re forming your opinions, do it carefully—go slow; hasty judgments oft are followed by regretting—that I know. —Anon.” After work the next day, I saw the boys again. I pulled the car over and rolled down the window. “Hey, guys,” I called out, “great sunset last night, huh?” “Yes, ma’am!” they all replied. One of the boys held up his cell phone. “I got a really good picture of it on my phone. Want to see?” “Sure,” I said with a big smile. “I’d love to.” Forgive me, Lord, for I truly want to see the best in everyone—right from the start. —Melody Bonnette Swang Digging Deeper: Prv 12:18, 31:26

What was I saying? I was waxing poetic and working toward pretentious, if I recall. Oh, yes, the smell of a fine, fall football Saturday. Spring is such a girl. She gets credit for love, hope, renewal, and the dream of what might be. Summer is all, ‘Hey dude, it’s warm; let’s party.’ It’s truly the fraternity brother of the four seasons. Fall, to me, seems like the bad-ass who is about to hop on his Harley and drive off into the sunset because he’s not going to listen to that bitch winter go on and on about how nobody likes her and the snow drifts make her look fat.

Out of the Works No Good Comes From The simple equation you found in my notebook frightened you but I could have explained it: After all bright colors of sunset and leaves are added together lovers are subtracted children multiplied, are divided, taken away. The remainder is small enough To stay in this room forever Gray-shadowing restless Trapped on a gray grass plain, I did not plan to tell you Better to lose colors gradually First the blue of the eyes Then the red of blood Its salt taste fading… Wherever you’re heading tonight You think you’re leaving me An the equation of this gray room. Hold her close Pray These are lies I am telling you. …You’ll drive on Putting distance and time between us- The snow in the high Sierras The dawn along the Pacific Dreaming you’ve left this narrow room. But tonight I have traced all escape routes With my finger across the tv weather map. Your ocean dawn is only the gray light In the corner of this room Your mountain snowstorm Flies against the glass screen Until we both are buried.

Jeeps; they were rugged vehicles). There were years when my kids climbed on my friends’ cars (even better). Because you can drive onto it, Fortieth Pole is particularly good for evening beach barbecues with kids—the water is calm and warm, and you’ll have a magnificent view of the sunset. Smith’s Point is hands down my favorite beach because you can access both the waves of the ocean and the flat water of the sound. There’s

When consciousness is simply experiencing reality as imaged in the mind, that is what we call being in the present moment. At this point in our discussion, there is nowhere else to be. The real world is outside, it is being reflected in your mind, and you are aware of the image right in front of you. In this very simple state, you are experiencing what you were meant to experience: the gift of the moment that’s being given to you. It comes in, and you learn from it simply because you experienced it. There are no distractions; there is just total oneness with the moment in front of you. Everyone has had some rare moments like this. Perhaps it took a beautiful sunset to bring you to such a state of one-pointed consciousness. You were driving around a corner and, all of a sudden, the sun was setting with beautiful purple, orange, and magenta. It was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen, and it completely blew your mind. What does that mean, “It blew your mind”? It means there was nothing left in your mind but that image of the sunset. Not the mortgage, not the problem with the boyfriend, not the worries from the past. The only experience you were having was this beautiful sunset coming in through your eyes, rendering in your mind, and merging with your entire being. Your entire consciousness was centered and focused on the experience you were having, instead of being scattered all over the place. It was truly a spiritual experience. That is what The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describes as the experiencer and the experience becoming one. You have allowed a merger between subject and object. There’s nothing distracting your consciousness from what is happening right in front of you. This is the yogic state of dharana—one-pointed concentration.

When consciousness is simply experiencing reality as imaged in the mind, that is what we call being in the present moment. At this point in our discussion, there is nowhere else to be. The real world is outside, it is being reflected in your mind, and you are aware of the image right in front of you. In this very simple state, you are experiencing what you were meant to experience: the gift of the moment that’s being given to you. It comes in, and you learn from it simply because you experienced it. There are no distractions; there is just total oneness with the moment in front of you. Everyone has had some rare moments like this. Perhaps it took a beautiful sunset to bring you to such a state of one-pointed consciousness. You were driving around a corner and, all of a sudden, the sun was setting with beautiful purple, orange, and magenta. It was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen, and it completely blew your mind. What does that mean, “It blew your mind”? It means there was nothing left in your mind but that image of the sunset. Not the mortgage, not the problem with the boyfriend, not the worries from the past. The only experience you were having was this beautiful sunset coming in through your eyes, rendering in your mind, and merging with your entire being. Your entire consciousness was centered and focused on the experience you were having, instead of being scattered all over the place. It was truly a spiritual experience. That is what The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describes as the experiencer and the experience becoming one. You have allowed a merger between subject and object.

This is a lovely car. You drive it and suddenly it’s 1965. What a wonderful time that was, just before everything started to change,” she said. “Who could argue, Lila?” I said. Unless you were black or spent ’65 in Vietnam, I thought as they drove away.

Anyone who has ever ventured to Hollywood with dreams of someday making it in this town, has ventured into Mel’s Drive-in on Sunset Boulevard.

Anyone who has ever ventured to Hollywood with dreams of someday making it in this town, has ventured into Mel’s Drive-in on Sunset Boulevard. This old dame has seen us all.

I headed for Constanza's place on Doheny Road, a couple of miles or so from where I was, but I wasn't as eager as I'd been a few minutes before. If Constanza had a gun, I'd better go in waving my white handkerchief. About half a mile from her place, I figured that I'd just drive up, park, and walk up like a traveling salesman, grinning and looking as pleasant as possible. I'd make it quick and be out of there in fifteen minutes. I was anxious to get to Wandra's. There was a little hitch in my plans. I turned off Sunset and was almost at the end of curving Loma Vista Drive, where it meets Doheny Road at the big Doheny Ranch, when the windshield splintered

There are serious doubts that Meghan saw any violence, not even the minor looting in a store near the ABC studio. In her absence the riots spread to Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. After five days the curfew was lifted and they returned to Los Angeles. Meghan drove past burnt-out buildings, though no houses near her home were damaged. More than 20 years later Meghan recalled a different experience: ‘I remember the curfew and I remember rushing back home and on that drive home, seeing ash fall from the sky and smelling the smoke and seeing it billow out of buildings and seeing people run out of buildings carrying bags and looting.’22 She also saw ‘men in the back of a van just holding guns and rifles’. Equally memorable was a familiar tree outside her father’s home ‘completely charred. And those memories don’t go away.’23

Within a few blocks drive, they turned right and headed north on US-441, where they began the steep climb into the Great Smoky Mountains. Hicks was the first to speak about the road they traversed. “I feel like I’ve gone to Heaven, but man, I sure don’t deserve this. Is this for real?” Shaw looked over at Paxton and said, “You didn’t tell me it would be like this.” “Like what?” Paxton asked. “This is God’s country, brother,” Shaw purred. “Hicks is right, it’s beautiful here.” “Welcome to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” Paxton said, pleased, “one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Over the city, under the Hollywood sign City lights are flickering, like a million fireflies He turns up the radio and says to me Remember this old melody? Hot Cali sunshine, radiating late June Driving up the coastline, top down, me and you Seashells, sand angels, taking in the sunset Baby I’m dreaming of when we first met

The Last Ride of Grayson “Grady” Hale In the heart of the wild west, under the vast expanse of the azure sky, rode Grayson “Grady” Hale, a cowboy known for his unyielding spirit and his trusty steed, Bess. Grady’s life was woven into the fabric of the frontier, a tapestry of cattle drives, campfire tales, and the pursuit of freedom that only the open range could offer. Grady was born to the saddle, learning to ride before he could walk, and to rope not long after. His father, a seasoned rancher, had instilled in him the values of hard work and respect for the land. Grady’s mother, a woman of strength and grace, taught him the gentle touch needed to soothe a spooked calf or mend a broken wing. As the years passed, Grady’s reputation grew. He wasn’t the fastest gun nor the richest rancher, but he had something more valuable—integrity. Folks from miles around would seek his help when rustlers threatened or when a neighbor needed a hand. Grady never turned his back on those in need, and his word was as solid as the mountains framing the horizon. One fateful day, a telegram arrived, calling Grady to a distant town. A band of outlaws had taken over, and the people were desperate. Grady kissed his wife, Emma, goodbye, promising to return once peace was restored. With Bess beneath him, he rode out, the dust of the trail rising like a storm behind him. The confrontation was inevitable. Grady, with a handful of brave souls, stood against the outlaws. Words were exchanged, and then gunfire. When the smoke cleared, the outlaws were either captured or fled, and the town was saved. But victory came at a cost—Grady had taken a bullet. As he lay there, the townsfolk gathered, their faces etched with concern and gratitude. Grady knew his ride was coming to an end. With his last breath, he whispered a message to be given to Emma, a message of love and a promise kept. Back at the ranch, Emma received the news with a stoic heart. She knew the risks of loving a cowboy, the same risks that made her love him all the more. She gazed out at the sunset, the colors painting the sky like the wildflowers of their meadow. And in that moment, she felt Grady’s presence, like the gentle brush of a breeze, telling her he was home at last. Grady’s tale is one of courage, sacrifice, and the enduring legacy of a cowboy who lived by his own code. His story, like the trails he once rode, winds its way into the legend of the west, reminding us that some spirits are as untameable as the land they love.

I no longer regret that I will never again breathe the wet air of London, with its scent of baking bread. Nor do I waste my time wondering what our lives might have been like had Edward survived the crossing. I cannot change the past, and even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to. And yet he does not leave me. Indeed, sometimes, when I’m driving down the freeway, or along Sunset Boulevard, he comes back; just appears there, in the passenger seat of my car.

I ran every day. In the morning before it got too hot. I wasn’t used to that kind of heat. Like more than half the year too. Reaching the hundreds often. Good thing there was that lake to cool off in. I came to love running in the heat. I’d run along the highway and it was scary, those two-lane highways are pretty narrow and people drive hella fast but I bought one of those shiny vests with reflectors on it to make sure people could see me. I kept building miles. Started running once in the morning and once at sunset. It stayed hard. Like I had to keep at it and make the effort every day. And then one day it felt like I needed it in a way that kind of scared me. It wasn’t not like addiction. I went to running for a feeling. How it felt after the run. But something else happened on the runs. I wasn’t running away from anything anymore. I was running at whatever in me had needed the way I needed before. I was running at whatever I’d been afraid of. And I would cry. That shit would make me emotional. Not short runs. Not the first few miles, not even five. But after seven and eight miles something else is happening. The running outruns the running. Slow as I probably looked, sweating all the way through my shirt to where there wasn’t a dry spot left on it. It could feel like flying. I got way into numbers, into when I started and ended my run, how long the run would take, I would reduce the numbers by adding them together, it was something they did in numerology, and if I was doing right inside, if things were good the numbers would boil down to four or eight or nine, those three numbers were my favorite, felt lucky to me I guess, I guess I became superstitious, or had always been without knowing it, and I shuffled all the music on my phone and felt things were most right if the songs I liked best came on during my runs and crucial moments, I guess it might sound crazy if I were to ever tell anyone, but I never would.

Instead, she went over the data again and again until she could recite the exact alignment numbers for the telescope input without looking, then slept for an hour to avoid spending half the night with her forehead on the keyboard again, and finally drove back up Mouna Kea. Its switchbacks twisted her through the cloud line after three-quarters of an hour, giving her a beautiful, turkey-red sunset with long streaks on the horizon for the last 20 minutes of driving. They looked like the fingers of a doomed deity clinging hotly to the Earth. The majesty of the sight plucked a chord in her that her intense dream on the keyboard of her workstation had strummed and never let go. The universe was still a fascinating place—whether out there among the stars, or down here on the blue paradise they called Earth

It has been my experience that age brings few gifts, but one of them is the acceptance that the past is the past, for good or bad, and if you are fortunate enough to have lived in an era that was truly exceptional, characterized by music, chopped-down Fords with chrome-plated engines roaring full out against purple sunsets, and drive-in restaurants where kids jitterbugged and did the dirty bop and knew they would never die, then those moments are forever inviolate, never to be shared or explained, and, like images on a Grecian urn, never subject to time and decay. Why make them less by trying to re-create them?

when I am running on fumes you fill me up. igniting my engine to throttle a bit harder. A bit faster. you rev me up regardless of the number of bumps, regardless of the amount of twists and turns in the road ahead. my heart belongs to you. propelling me towards the sunset. the reason I speed down the street in this passionate flight. Not afraid to jump any unsuspecting hill. most might think that I am crazy, the way that I drive. if they knew the reason why, they'd press the pedal down as well. when I am running on fumes, rev me up, rev me up. Baby rev me up. I am a well-oiled machine with a place to be. whether towards the moon or the sun. you're the gasoline that ignites the spark that pushes me to go a little further.

No one owned Sin Wilder. Sin Wilder owned the world. And when I found a way out of here, I was going to drive off into the sunset with a duffel bag full of cash and the only person who’d ever mattered to me in my entire life. Me.

Then you repeat. The thing that goes badly wrong means that the someone we like has to take another step to get around the bad wrongness and back toward the something he wants VERY BADLY. He takes the next step, and everything goes even more badly wrong. Then he loses his map. Then his flashlight falls into a storm drain and he has an asthma attack and his seeing eye dog dies. Then the cop who pulls him over for speeding while driving drunk in the nude turns out to be the short-tempered father of the bride he is marrying tomorrow. Then it goes more badly wrong for the someone we like, much more badly. Then the party is attacked and scattered by a band of goblins, and then the Gollum is on his trail, and the lure of the Ring is slowly destroying his mind. Then he finds the blasted corpses of his foster parents killed by Imperial Storm Troopers, and his house burnt to the ground. Then Lex Luthor chains a lump of Kryptonite around his neck and pushes him into a swimming pool and fires twin stealth atomic rockets at the San Andreas Fault in California and at Hackensack, New Jersey. And the spunky but beautiful girl reporter falls into a crack in the earth and dies. Then he is stung by Shelob and dies. Then he is maimed by Darth Vader and discovers his arch foe is his very own father, and he loses his grip and falls. Then he steps out unarmed to confront Lord Voldemort and dies. Then Judas Iscariot kisses him, Peter denounces him, he is humiliated, spat upon, whipped, betrayed by the crowd, tortured, sees his weeping mother, and dies a painful, horrible death and dies. Then he is thrown overboard and swallowed by a whale and dies. Then he gets help, gets better, arises from his swoon, is raised from the dead, the stone rolls back, the lucky shot hits the thermal exhaust port, and the Death Star blows up, the Dark Tower falls, the spunky but beautiful girl reporter is alive again due to a time paradox, and he is given all power under heaven and earth and either rides off into the sunset, or goes back to the bat-cave, or ascends into heaven, and we roll the credits.

We were both shattered. We were broken people who longed to be whole. We thought it was love that was driving us to do what we did. But it wasn't love. It was fear. We were both too afraid of ending up unwanted and unneeded.

Degrading laughter is a trash compactor and I will not jump in. It’s a self esteem detractor that some call a chiropractor and say to, “give it a spin.” But I won’t test drive that bee hive. So please don’t try to hand me the keys. That victimizing humor is a self consuming consumer that just stirs up the B’s: belittle, betray, bereave, blatant because it binges on the hinges of its own applause.

During this period, I served many celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn, Gary Oldman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Lewis, Rob Lowe, Colin Farrell, Tom Selleck, David Spade, Thomas Haden Church, Sharon Osbourne, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tara Reid, Toby Maguire and Diane Keaton. You know all of them, so no explanation needed. The hardest thing about serving such famous Hollywood icons, at least for the first time, is trying not to stare at them. It’s so otherworldly to see someone like Selleck, who’s not just huge -he’s bigger than life- and who you´ve watched on big screen and small for years… they are, invariably, taller or shorter than you’d imagined. And the women are either spectacularly beautiful or very ordinary without screen makeup. But you can’t stare. It’s verbatim by ownership. Brad Pitt was cool and very humble. He had a few Pyramid beers with a producer friend, and then took off on his motorcycle down Sunset Boulevard, heading West towards the Palisades. Am I saying that he was driving drunk? No. He was there for two hours and had two beers, so he wasn’t breaking the law. At least not with my assistance. He had been there many times before, I just hadn’t been the one serving him. I remember when he came in during his filming of Troy. He had long hair and a cast on his leg. Ironically, he had torn his Achilles’ tendon while playing Achilles in the epic film.

intricately patterned. There is nothing rustic here. Only when she looks at the paintings does Elizabeth remember the dark approach through the forest. These are outdoor paintings, trees and wild cliffs, huge sunsets. Elizabeth sits with Nina on a divan before a cluster of Bierstadts. Deep trees and cerebral winter skies. The museum is nearly empty this weekday morning. The elaborate gallery still. Elizabeth looks intently at the winter landscapes. And as she looks, she whispers to Nina, “It’s marvelous, just sitting here while the girls are at camp.” Nina looks at the floor. Renée is working as a junior counselor at the camp. It was Nina’s idea. She thought the job with the Lamkins would be good for her daughter, that it would teach her responsibility and how to care for children. But Renée made a fuss. Nina had to threaten and cajole and, in the end, force Renée to go. There were tears and threats up to the day she started. Even now, Renée is sulking about working there with the little children. “Renée doesn’t like the camp,” Nina says. “I think she’d rather waste her time wandering around, doing nothing, playing with that Arab girl. Andras doesn’t care. I hear the father owns a trucking business—he just drives trucks from New York to Montreal—” She breaks off, frustrated. “She’s a good child, really,” Elizabeth says. “But Andras spoils her,” says Nina. Then Elizabeth sees that Nina is really upset. There are tears in Nina’s eyes. It’s hard for her to speak. Elizabeth sees it, and doesn’t know what to do. They are close neighbors, but they are not intimate friends. Beautiful Nina in her crisp dress, downcast among all these paintings. “He’s very … indulgent of the children, both of them,” Nina says. “He used to take them to the warehouse and let them pick out any toys they liked.” “At least he’s not in the candy business,” Elizabeth says. “Toys won’t rot their teeth.” “He’s going to let Renée quit piano,” Nina says bitterly, utterly serious, “and she’ll regret it all her life.” Elizabeth tries to look sympathetic. She’s heard Renée play. “And now that Renée is working at the Lamkins’ camp, she wants to quit that too.” “He wouldn’t let her do that,” Elizabeth ventures. “I

My phone buzzed in the center console again. "What's happening with this thing?" Dad grabbed it. "Dad, really?" I didn't want him to see the texts between Dash and me. Awkward. "He says he knew it." The traffic opened up, and I went right on Sunset. "Please don't scroll." "Knew what?" "I have no idea, and I'm driving. So forget it for now." "I'll ask him." —Knew what?— "Dad, really?" I snapped the phone away. Ding ding. I couldn't look. I was going thirty on Sunset and the lights were synchronized for a westward trip, so there would be no stopping at a red. "Let me see," Dad said, hand out. All I needed was for my father to see something about Dash's tongue on my pussy or the way I sounded when I came. So I pulled over.

We got back on the road, heading west. I remember my thoughts as we ventured into the Simpson Desert. There’s nothing out here. The landscape was flat and lifeless. Except for the occasional jump-up--a small mesa that rose twenty or thirty feet above the desert floor-it just looked like dirt, sticks, and dead trees. The Simpson Desert is one of the hottest places on earth. But Steve brought the desert to life, pointing out lizards, echidnas, and all kinds of wildlife. He made it into a fantastic journey. In the middle of this vast landscape were the two of us, the only people for miles. Steve had become adept at eluding the film crew from time to time so we could be alone. There was a local cattle station about an hour-and-a-half drive from where we were filming, a small homestead in the middle of nowhere. The owners invited the whole crew over for a home-cooked meal. Steve and I stayed in the bush, and Bob and Lyn headed to one of their favorite camping spots. After having dinner, the crew couldn’t locate us. They searched in the desert for a while before deciding to sleep in the car. What was an uncomfortable night for them turned out to be a brilliant night for us! Steve made it romantic without being traditional. His idea of a beautiful evening was building a roaring campfire, watching a spectacular sunset, and cooking a curry dinner for me in a camp oven. Then we headed out spotlighting, looking for wildlife for hours on end. It was fantastic, like the ultimate Easter egg hunt. I never knew what we’d find. When Steve did discover something that night--the tracks of a huge goanna, or a tiny gecko hiding under a bush--he reveled in his discovery. His excitement was contagious, and I couldn’t help but become excited too. The best times in my life were out in the bush with Steve.

Life’s got an interesting sense of humor.” He was relaxing now that she’d decided to drop the subject. A long, put-upon sigh. “Isn’t that the truth? Clearly, I’m being tested.” Curious, he asked, “And are you passing?” Another adorable pout. “I don’t think so.” That mouth looked like she’d just eaten a bowl of strawberries and the juices had stained her lips. He wanted to bite her. Lick her to see if she tasted as sweet as she looked. She got all squinty, another pretzel firmly in hand. “I’m drunk.” Unfortunately. “I don’t doubt that.” Her gaze caught his. Darted away. Her pink tongue flitted out to wet her full lower lip. It glistened like an invitation. “I’d leave, but I can’t walk. My feet hurt.” “I wouldn’t let you go, anyway.” He was a little taken aback to find the words true. It had been a long time since he’d wanted anything, but he still recognized the spark of desire. He wanted her, and wasn’t ready for her to walk off into the sunset yet. The right or wrong of the situation didn’t much matter. She swirled a finger over the edge of her ice water. “Do you think you could stop me? He cocked a brow and gave her a once-over. “Considering the way you hobbled in here, I think I can take you.” Dark lashes almost obscured the green of her irises as she squinted. “I’m supposed to be getting independent now.” “I see,” he said, considering the guy she’d ditched at the altar for the first time. It took a lot to drive a woman out a church window with nothing but the clothes on her back. “Everyone needs a little rescue sometime.” “You’re not one of those knight-in-shining-armor guys, are you?” She said the words as if they were foul. “Not normally, but I’m making an exception for you.” He was surprised to find he wanted the role, despite her distain. “I don’t want an exception.” Her tone had taken on a decided wail. “Too bad.” Yep, he wasn’t budging on this one. She wanted to stand on her own two feet. He understood, but it only made him more determined. “Why me?” “Because I want to.” It was that simple. Besides, she’d probably take off in the morning and he’d never see her again. One night to break the monotony wouldn’t hurt. Before she could respond, he turned and walked the length of the bar. Flipping open the counter, he rounded the corner, striding to stand in front of her. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything chivalrous. Won’t you let me?” Even white teeth nibbled on her bottom lip and he curled his hand into a fist to keep from stroking his thumb over the abused, moist flesh. Glassy, pensive eyes blinked up at him. He stepped close enough to feel the warmth of her skin. “What kind of a man would I be if I left you stranded?” “I’m

People says there is so much to learn from a sea, waves, sunset, sky and people. And so Marine Drive is my favorite place.

My favorite time to write is in the late afternoon, weekdays, particularly Wednesday. This is how I go about it: I take a fresh pot of tea into my study and close the door. Then I remove my clothes and leave them in a pile as if I had melted to death and my legacy consisted of only a white shirt, a pair of pants, and a pot of cold tea. Then I remove my flesh and hand it over a chair. I slide if off my bones like a silken garment. I do this so that what I write will be pure, Completely rinsed of the carnal, uncontaminated by the preoccupations of the body. Finally I remove each of my organs and arrange them On a small table near the window. I do not want to hear their ancient rhythms when I am trying to tap out my own drumbeat. Now I sit down at the desk, ready to begin. I am entirely pure: nothing but a skeleton at a typewriter. I should mention that sometimes I leave my penis on. I find it difficult to ignore the temptation. Then I am a skeleton with a penis at a typewriter. In this condition I write extraordinary love poems most of them exploiting the connection between sex and death. I am concentration itself: I exist in a universe where there is nothing but sex, death, and typewriting. After a spell of this I remove my penis too. Then I am all skull and bones typing into the afternoon. Just the absolute essentials, no flounces. Now I write only about death, most classical of themes in language light as the air between my ribs. Afterward, I reward myself by going for a drive at sunset. I replace my organs and slip back into my flesh and clothes. Then I back the car out of the garage and speed through woods on winding country roads, passing stone walls, farmhouses, and frozen ponds, all perfectly arranged like words in a famous sonnet.

At her school on a road traversed all day by hulking trucks and double-decker buses, Anna’s lungs are likely getting an even bigger dose of exhaust. Spikes like that, on and near the busy streets where so many of us spend much of our time—strolling to work, driving, sitting in our living rooms—make pollution a threat even in places where overall air quality is good. As afternoon turns to evening and a pickup basketball game heats up outside the conference room, McConnell tells me about the Colorado hospital where his mom was treated after a heart attack. It sat beside a major highway, and he couldn’t help thinking when he visited about the evidence suggesting air pollution causes arrhythmias, clotting problems, and other changes dangerous for heart patients. Even putting the parking lot between the road and the hospital would have made a difference, he says. The building’s designers probably didn’t know that, but zoning officials should, and they can make rules to reduce unnecessary exposure. “If you’re building a new school, why would you build it next to a freeway?” he asks. Exercise greatly increases the amount of air—and thus, the pollution—our lungs take in, so McConnell wishes the runners he sees along L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard knew how much better off they’d be on one of the quieter roads that parallels it. Those who do, he believes, ought to nudge them in that direction.

AWARE The great sigh of things. To be aware of aware (pronounced ah-WAH-ray) is to be able to name the previously ineffable sigh of impermanence, the whisper of life flitting by, of time itself, the realization of evanescence. Aware is the shortened version of the crucial Japanese phrase mono-no-aware, which suggested sensitivity or sadness during the Heian period, but with a hint of actually relishing the melancholy of it all. Originally, it was an interjection of surprise, as in the English “Oh!” The reference calls up bittersweet poetic feelings around sunset, long train journeys, looking out at the driving rain, birdsong, the falling of autumn leaves. A held-breath word, it points like a finger to the moon to suggest an unutterable moment, too deep for words to reach. If it can be captured at all, it is by haiku poetry, the brushstroke of calligraphy, the burbling water of the tea ceremony, the slow pull of the bow from the oe. The great 16th-century wandering poet Matsuo Basho caught the sense of aware in his haiku: “By the roadside grew / A rose of Sharon. / My horse / Has just eaten it.” A recent Western equivalent would be the soughing lyric of English poet Henry Shukman, who writes, “This is a day that decides by itself to be beautiful.

Tonight was one of those nights where everyone pulls over to watch the sunset. I love our drive home from town through the pineapple fields. Every sunset is an opportunity to reset.

And the boy herding the cows, and the surveyor driving in his chaise over the dam, and the gentleman out for a walk, all gaze at the sunset, and ever one of them thinks it's terribly beautiful, but no one knows or can say in what its beauty lies.

Sometimes—many times—both in life and in marriage, you hope for the sunset overlooking the ocean off a deserted beach in the Mayan Riviera, but what you get is a drive to physical therapy. That’s okay. Maybe it’s actually how it should be.