… I looked up and out the window and this is what I saw.
Thank goodness I wasn’t trying to multitask, look up out the window, slice veggies with a sharp knife, etc.
Years ago, probably around the early 2000s, I was walking home instead of taking the Green Line public transportation. As I walked I happened to look up. The sky was on fire. I just stood there. I was walking through a neighborhood where people, at least at that time, didn’t often look like me. A man came out of his house. At first he looked at me and then he too looked up. We just stood in wonder. I don’t remember that we exchanged words, just acknowledged each other with a smile before I moved on and he went back inside.
Later that strange science fellow I’d met explained about the sun lighting the clouds from below. With my then-new interest in photography, I raced around the city trying to capture this phenomena. He even tried to help by driving me to places where the sun would be setting. And once, after leaving his church, he stopped by a flea market and surprised me with a fine art photograph of clouds by a local photographer. Years later, he couldn’t remember the origin of the print, that hangs in our bedroom, but I could remind him. And then he did remember.
