The Sun Is

Do you watch the sun set? As an undergraduate in San Francisco I would find my way to Ocean Beach almost every day (except the El Nino year of '96-'97) to watch the sun set. I had two spots complete with striking cliffs and trees to perch within, and watch the sun slip to the other side of the earth.

I like to think of it not so much as setting, but going to the other side. Setting speaks only of the sun disappearing from sight--but we know that it is actually only made invisible because of the rotation of the Earth. Strangely, this is they only time of the day when we can gaze directly at the sun, if only for a few seconds. Why would one want to miss that moment?

As an adolescent, I would retreat to the Pacific... I would paddle out on my board and sit on it. Although the surf was sometimes not so great, this was the best time for me to be in the water, because I would sit on my board and watch the sun sink into the ocean, being rocked back and forth, just out past the break.

There was a man who we always found at Ocean Beach at this important time of day. He had two frisbees and would alternate throwing one into the stiff wind coming from Hawaii and beyond over the Pacific. The disc would spin and hover in the air, and then be returned to the man. Sometimes he would catch it, and then throw the other disc into the air, have it spin away and then return to him to be caught at times, at other times dropped into the broken wave.

Now living in the East Bay I sometimes make the effort to catch the sun set. But it isn't quite the same, even from the towing vantage of the hills, or the point of Alameda. I think that it is right for the Pacific--violent and vast--to swallow the sun. Nothing else can then give birth to the source of light and life on the other side of the world.

Now I sound like some kind of hippie.