I stopped for a moment* (too long) to take in the moving display on the 4.25- in-the-afternoon local sky. I knew my time was running out, I knew I should look ahead, walk on and not get distracted - but I just couldn't turn the eyes from the sight.
"I'll just take in one more eyeful", I thought like heathen sunset-lovers do, "before it perishes - for ever..." Then I caught a glimpse of very bright light shining straight into my intellect.
"Oh, ye Christian sunset-lover of little faith!", I exclaimed inner-soully, "walk on, look ahead, keep explaining to others that what they see is merely a prompt in the sky to say Hallelujah! - and you'll get a million** sunsets for each pair of eyes which you'll unblind; and they'll be changing so fast - but still safe in the eyes of the Lord of Beauty - that the whole Salon des Refusés of 1863 will barely manage to make quick impressions of them (assuming some*** have made it to the Sun).
*after leaving the Museum where I spent (as I like to do) a couple of minutes in front of another sunset, the one above.
** though I accept that my eschatology may be of the impressionist kind, here, i.e. as imprecise as Monet's technique.
***(All the referencing and pronounsing can really be a paint in the class. So instead of constant - and muddy - repetition of 'them' I decided to cut a long story short and use a simple and pithy asterisk.) ...of them#.
#i.e. the painters
Venice Twilight by Claude Monet
Oil on canvas
65.2 cm × 92.4 cm (25.7 in × 36.4 in)
National Museum and Art Gallery of Cardiff, Wales
