East Coast Sunset

On the West Coast, the sky explodes like a five alarm fire; all showy reds, oranges, and yellows parading across the sky. Like Revelers storming up Market Street Carnival Tuesday. You feel it in your chest. Beauty too; too beautiful to be true. And new every fucking time, like the Great Artist saying, hey, check me out. No cliché, no two Caribbean sunsets are the same. And Antigua westward facing sunsets, they’ll make a believer out of Bill Maher. Because as the sun dips toward the horizon, some contemplation on life – its endings, the tomorrows after the endings – is inevitable. Not always as conscious thought maybe but somewhere in your soul where truth lives.

Sunset as viewed from the East Coast though is hazy like movie magic. Unreal. The East Coast is the place of sunrises. So at twilight it enters its dreamy phase. First you notice the moon phasing in, an apparition, like new love. From Here to Eternity. The waves at Half Moon are a raucous riot, all urgent and loud. But the sky is quiet. Moon hanging there like a night light turned on too early. Colours slide in, soft; the shy side of all those showy reds and oranges and yellows. Moon might be full but you feel a half smile coming on. As the wild waves and the quiet night sidle up to each other and the world slows its spinning. Not ready to go to sleep yet, but heavy in its bones as the burden of being lifts.

Now how do you capture that?

Neither West Coast nor East, but an Antiguan Sunset.