But the colors and the play of light, each hour being different one from the other, are so amazing that even I take my nose out of a book or glance up from the computer to look again.
Sunsets here are called " The Pink Moment." A moment which never looks exactly the same one evening to the next, due to weather, maine layer, time of year, and time of day. These sunsets are indescribable but you must catch the exact minute when the sun is sinking and reflects on these hills for just a few moments.
The beauty is fleeting - which is not a new thought but an eternal truth.
People who visit always say, " You must love standing in the kitchen, cooking, just so you can look out the window
Well, no, actually, I don't love cooking at all, but I do like looking out that window when refilling Barney's (the dog) water bowl, or making the easist possible dinner.
What the view really makes me think of is my mother, Muriel Black, who died six years ago, before we moved here.
She adored beautiful scenery, and would have been rhapsodic about this house and this view. I am so sad and sorry that she never had the joy of seeing it, and seeing that we live in this incredible spot. I have her ashes in my dressing room, and should I ever decide to part with them, I will put her where she can see the view from the far end of the property - the best angle for the purple mountains.
Howard ( my husband) says having her ashes in the dressing room is a " dangling participle."
Howard has the ashes of our collie, Andy, in his office, so what does he know.
Howard has a way with language, but I feel that my mother likes to see what I'm wearing when I dress up. I don't exactly talk to her, but I do communicate, and am not ready to scatter her ashes. Even in view of the hills to Ojai!
If she had lived to see this, she would have said ( a minimum of twenty times day) " Oh, JoAnn, this view, this view: How lucky you are to be here."
And I am lucky - WE are lucky because it is so healing and calming to look out and just let your mind drift.
The swimming pool ( solar - how do you like that, P.S. 241, Brooklyn?) faces out towards the mountains and has a fountain at the end - when I turn on that fountain and the water plays against the mountains - it is absolutely breathtaking.
Never mind the ants all over the edge of the pool or the millipedes at the doors from the last blog. ( I'm waiting for the Terminex guy who never ever shows up on time- if at all).
When we were looking for a house we realised that an ocean view ( and I love ocean views) was out of the question - but this is really just as nice, if not better, and the windows don't get pitted every year, and the furniture isn't all damp.
Ok a little sour grapes there. Just a little - maybe one small shrunken grape. But the ocean is just across th street and at the bottom of our little hill, so we have the best of both.
Does anyone remember the Edna St Vincent Millay poem:
"Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand,
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand"
We are built on solid rock, but , Millay certainly wasn't talking about real estate, she was talking about how to live one's life. She would have loved the view as much as I do, and would have written about it in a much more beautiful way.
There has never been an evening, no matter how troubled or upset I might have been, when, gazing from the back of the house, I happen to catch that Pink Moment and feel that all is right with the world.