how many more times?

Neil Gaiman once imagined (and wrote) that Lucifer quit being boss of Hell. (if you believe in the whole Christianity/Islam version of hell)

He (Lucifer that is, not Neil) then went on vacation, plonked himself down on a beach in Australia, and watched the sunset while drinking wine and having a little picnic*.

Offering a toast to the sunset, he smiled to himself and said something along the lines of "the bastard sure knows how to make 'em" ...referring to the sunset.

Random insert: Lucifer (meaning morningstar) is meant to be in charge of sunrises, and God is in charge of sunsets. Which I personally find quite poetic since morning is supposed to be when all the evils go away, and night is when all the evil comes out to play. It's like their farewell present to the world before retiring for the er, time being. (again, if you go by the whole Christianity/Islam thing) Although, Jesus apparently refers to himself as the morning star as well. Now there's a funny pickle. AND. "Lucifer" isn't in the original Hebrew texts. Now there's a funnier pickle.

ANYWAY.

There's this whole big soliloquy about how no two sunrises or sunsets are ever alike, and how each one is special, yet each and everyone breath-taking in their beauty.

And if you read this blog long enough, you'll know that I have a fondness for sunsets, and that I try to capture a few of them on film, when I get the time to even watch a sunset, or even raise my head enough to realise the sun is indeed going down the horizon.

Apart from the fact that they are beautiful, never the same, and are a joy to capture in half the glory they were at on film, I cherish each and every sunset I ever see.

As I cherish many things. And yet our memories are so fragile.

Because we don't know when we will die, we gets to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really.

How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that so deeply part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it?

Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that.

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?

Perhaps 20.

And yet it all seems limitless.

-Peter Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Listening To: Natalie Imbruglia- Shiver, which has just changed into Fiona Apple- I Know

*don't start on why he needs to eat. He probably doesn't and does it for the sheer evilness of it ok- I mean what with gluttony, temptation, drunken debauchery and all