PAINTING A 5:30 PM SKY

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I saw the most striking sky today. Of COURSE my camera battery was dead when I went to take a picture of it. This is my feeble attempt at recreating it.

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I was walking home from the boulangerie with my poppyseed baguette (talk about splurging - I spent an extra thirty centimes for those poppyseeds!) that I bought for dinner (the poor man’s - or Frenchman’s - diet). I had my headphones in so that I could be left to my own world and thoughts. A pigeon took off not two steps in front of where I was walking, and my eyes casually followed him straight up to the belfry of a gothic-inspired cathedral…and to one of the most striking skies I have seen in quite some time.

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It was not yet time for the sun to set, but it was definitely growing weaker. The sky was a blue-grey, as though someone had sprinkled dry, chalky concrete powder over the already pale blue sky. I wanted to think that the grey was somewhat ominous, but it wasn’t quite definitive enough even for that. The sun itself was particularly large in the sky, and was a pale yellow, like the color you might find in the kitchen of an old, country kitch-decorated house. It was oddly dull, such that I was looking straight at it for a rather long time without even having to squint. It was as though that same chalky concrete powder had been sprinkled across it, too, and the sun, though well aware, was too tired at this hour to bother trying to shine through it. Instead, it glowed slightly with a lazy air of resignation. The color around the watery yellow circle was a strange mix of grey, yellow, and blue, forming a slightly brownish grey in areas. It reminded me of a watercolor in which the colors bled together in certain spots and whose already pale, diluted colors had been faded even more after a month and a half on the fridge.

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I don’t quite know why this had such an effect on me, but it did.

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Comments

[Lucy]

Good word pictures
I like the word pictures you paint... Maman

[Daria]

agree avec maman
Yes good words Emily! I like the pix too. I love reading your blog. I will tell Dylan. He is quite the writer you know. Now he is working for NASA and just got this promotion to direct this multimedia project. I think he would lover to read about your insights on the French world...............chalky concrete powder......ooooh....nice girl. Love, Daria