Beauty

I went to the movies this afternoon - House of Sand - and it was a little after five when we got out, too early to eat. Plus, I'd had Vietnamese Thursday, Chinese Friday, and left-over Chinese Saturday... so instead of eating at that nice Chinese place a block from the theater we drove up to the Bombay Peacock, about forty minutes away. It looked like it was going to rain - if it hadn't, it would have missed a good chance, as they say - but from inside the restaurant we didn't think it had. Some deer - a doe and her fawn - came out of the trees and browsed along the woods' edge, their thin legs graceful along the thick dark green in the dusk, which was nice, and the wind kept picking up and dying down.

When we left the restaurant, it was nearly seven. The sky was gorgeous - I haven't seen anything like it in years (though, to be fair, I'm not often out at sunset). Still, it was breath-taking. Bright blue sky was still showing in parts, through white clouds just touched with pale grey, and on the other side of the sky it was all dark clouds, slate and pearl and nearly black. The sky itself was shading down to that lovely pale aqua and near yellow of the end of the day, and there were great huge smooth billows of clouds gone all golden, while the dark clouds had streaks and billows of pink and red, parts of them a bright nearly neon red. And arching over the dark clouds was the most brilliant rainbow I've seen in I can't think when, bright and perfect and accompanied by a fainter double bow - red on the inside of that one, like a mirror of the first. It had rained a bit - the ground was wet and the windshield spattered - and the night came up and the colors in the sky shifted and blended together in darkening gray and red until the sky was black...