Dawn or Dusk?

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The warm embrace of the autumn sun had just set and the dusk dipped the sky into a solacing hue of neither grey nor blue.

Or, if you see things differently, through the frigid night’s air a hopeful glow radiates through, breaking into day.

For Bert, which description fit best he did not know, for he couldn’t separate the two. On one hand, he saw the twilight in the scene, but oddly felt as if the music of the violins- the moment’s soundtrack his mind thought necessary to imagine- were only just beginning to get faster, sharper. On the other hand, he inexplicably knew this was the universe sending him a sign, telling him the credits were rolling.

He wanted to hold on to this feeling. Was he beginning to imagine distant drum rolls reviving the scene? Was he so desperate to continue on, find more to the journey, than to let the moment become part of the past?

He had all too often seen the opposite of things, in the most inopportune of times. The most burning evidence being this adventure he had taken upon himself, begrudgingly. Stubbornly he trudged through it, through every second of the moment, craving to reach an end, longing to reach a destination, the destination he now witnessed. He climbed and climbed, and now? Now Bert longed for more time to gaze upon the scene stretching out before him and time…Now was when he realized the point was to climb, not necessarily to reach the top.

Yes, there was wonder to gaze upon high above, but that marked too much distance between him and the moment’s splendor. He should’ve taken that gaze with him along the way. But only now did he see the beauty. Now that he was at the finish line. So now was when his eyes resolved to focus on the sunrise? Now that he could no longer immerse himself in the glory, but rather see it dissipate into a shadow of the past?

For Bert and for many, this seems to be a scene of uncertain end. Was the top really reached, or is he about to take two steps back, and plummet? Will he not plummet, and instead somehow fly? All is uncertain about this scene, including Bert’s mind. Which way ought he look at it? The world is too complex to understand, but Bert needed to know which way to perceive this. He feared believing the reality of what he saw, rather than hoped for, and was afraid of never accepting the truth, for that would mean the universe was telling him to stop, that it was over, that he had done all he could. But Bert wanted to do more.

And, sitting there, just as he began to accept that the scene read the end of a chapter, the scene faced the other way. Whether the universe was truly telling him it was not over, or whether he had convinced himself of that fact, he couldn’t not tell. And yet, little did he know that the hue of orange peaking between the blue that very moment would shine the rest of his way.