SPIRIT OF THE SUNSET SKY

While I was painting the deck late this afternoon, for some reason my mind mused back to the distant past (back in the early 70's) when as a tourist visiting Horyuji in Nara I saw there in the treasure house (which happened to be open to the public for a few days), among so many other wonderful things from the Heian era a small box covered entirely in the dazzlingly refractant (even after 1400 years), opalescent rainbow wings of a kind of beetle I had never yet seen in Japan.

Looking at that box I could understand why I hadn't: there probably weren't any such beetles left; it must have been mighty popular as a decoration, took a few thousand insects to make one box, I expect, and that likely wasn't the only box or other artifact decorated with such wings, they were really a knockout, way more so than even abalone shell.

I'd often thought of that bright creation over the years, and of that nonexistent beetle, and there I was painting, as I say, out on the deck, turned around to dip my brush when there before my Heisei (Japan's current imperial era) eyes was a small but air-filling, shimmering blue luminescent rainbow beetle in the flesh, just sitting there gleaming on the wood in the evening dimness, looking right at me from way beyond the farthest dreams of Tiffany, me with a look on my face like saints on holy cards used to have when they were experiencing god.

The very spirit of the sunset sky had touched down beside me for a brief moment as though just to let me know, then lifted its priceless wing covers and flew off into the falling darkness, where I stood absent, brush in hand, adrift somewhere between now and forever.