From the archives...
50 minutes under the original Big Top.
8:08 PM
Porch sitting.... a routine that reminds me of evening vespers at a Catholic overnight camp I attended when I was 9 years old. After dinner, we gathered in a simple wood chapel for evening vesper services. The ritual was calming. The chanting and singing put a soft period to the end to the conclusion of the day's events. The Latin verses I learned rolled off my tongue easily. I had no idea what they meant. Flashbacks of the carefree swimming and games we played all day long tucked me into bed.The chanting and singing at the evening services, with incense wafting to the rafters deepened the ritual and helped ease a loneliness I felt for my mother and father.
I still remember one of rhe last phrases, "in secula saeculorum" (for ever and ever)..Amen. before we marched to small wooden cabins, three pairs of bunks one over the other and the smell of Colgate toothpaste, part of the evening wash up we were required to complete before climbing into our bunks.
Tonight, instead smelling the thick aromatic incense swirling into the chapel rafters, the mild aroma of Bigelow Green Tea wafts from the mug in my hand.
8:08 PM
A dog barks in the distance, crows make their rowdy final caws before choosing their resting places high in the trees across the street. A jet at about 20,000 feet is sounding taps. The cosmos is folding up its tent for the day.
8:58 PM
Gathering dusk has eased into its armchair. A great gray stillness envelops the land. A dog barks in the distance. Crows have made their final caws before choosing resting places high in the trees, A jet at about 20,000 feet is sounding taps for the day. Deepening gray sky turns cheek to pillow, dusk enveloping the cosmos as the earth makes its quotidien turn from the sun.
In the time it took the kitchen kettle to boil and the tea to steep, evening has pulled its arms into its sleeping robe, ready to preside until dawn.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
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