Bordeaux and Palmiers

Some people like sunrise.

And I get that… I really do. The beginning of the day, the early morning before anyone’s awake.

But I’m not a sunrise kind of girl.

I like the sunset, the desk, the crepuscule, as the French call it. It feels like so much more of a transition to me. I remember reading sunrise being described in A Separate Peace as looking at the world through a burlap sack, something I understand. You expect sunrise to arrive with a fanfare, and it very rarely does.

Sunset creeps, but in a different way. The day grows cooler, you notice as you’re walking that the street that used to make you sweat makes you need a sweater. You see the sun getting larger, descending down behind the trees. If you’re in Paris, you start to lose it behind buildings, walking whole blocks without knowing where it is.

The parks in Paris are all gated, and all of the gates are promptly locked at dusk. Paris recognizes the sunset as an integral part of its days: nighttime in New York may be made for wanderers, but in Paris, we nighttime refugees have to find somewhere other than the welcome of a park bench for our internal monologues.

But in the spring and summer, you can just barely catch the beginning of a true sunset in the park. The policemen may be standing at the gate, ready to hustle you out the minute you get too close, but if you linger for awhile, they won’t come chase you. You can take a picture of the sun, a bright orange, hovering by the famous tower. You can turn away from it and try to forget that you’re in Paris, and just be for a moment, there in the dusk and the late sunlight.

Dusk is forgiving that way. It lets you forget everything, even who you are.

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