"The visual opium of the sunset was what I craved."

Sunset in Missouri, courtesy of Dianne Irey McDonald

As I mentioned in my March 9th post, I will be presenting, for a couple of days, excerpts from Diane Ackerman's book, A Natural History of the Senses.  Why I am doing this is explained in that post. Today, I have a piece for you from the Vision section, pages 255-256:


"Some years ago, when I had taken a job directing a writing program in St. Louis, Missouri, I often used color as a tonic.  Regardless of the oasis-eyed student in my office, or the fumings of the hysterically anxious chairman, I tried to arrive home at around the same time every evening, to watch the sunset from the large picture window in my living room.

Each night the sunset surged with purple pampas-grass plumes, and shot fuchsia rockets into the pink sky.  The visual opium of the sunset was what I craved.

Sunset at Creve Coeur Lake, in Missouri.

Next day, ...I stood chatting with one of the literary historians.  I was paying too much rent for my apartment, she explained.  True, the apartment overlooked the park's changing seasons, and was only a block away from a charming cobblestone area full of art galleries, antique stores, and ethnic restaurants.  But this was all an expense, as she put it, with heavy emphasis on the second syllable.

That evening, as I watched the sunset's pinwheels...I thought: the sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on."