On sunshine
Media
Part of The Carolinian
- Title
- On sunshine
- Language
- English
- Source
- The Carolinian Volume XV (Issue No. 9) October 1951
- Year
- 1951
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- I SUPPOSE everyone gets affected to some / degree by ■ sunshine. Well, I go for i! with an intensity that is almost a passion. I wonder if the fact that I was born under the sign of Leo and thereby consigned to be a "child of the sun" has anything to do with it. Frankly, I don't believe in astrology, but the allusion is interesting and the coincidence fascinating. I go for sunshine. . . not wisps and snatches of it. . . but scads of it, as much as I can possibly comprehend. I may be in the lowest of moods, but if there could only be sunshine when I am in such low moods. I'm sure I'd pull out of the blue spell very quickly. It gives me a feeling of kinship with those who write or express themselves as I feel about sun shine. There's the line I came across in a book sometime ago in which sunshine was spoken of as liquid golden wine. . . that's a beautiful gem of a description of sunshine to savor through days of gloom and moodiness. Sometimes, I wish I could keep some of the sunshine I love so dis tinctly instilled in my mind to hold against the darker days. <9// Sunshine By VIRGINIA PERALTA (Post-Graduate School) I am no artist, nor do I hope to ever really understand or feel a kindred warmth for much of our abstract modern art. But I certainly go into ecstacies over Amorsolo's paintings. I love the way he dashes his sunshine so brightly over his colorful canvases, lighting up the subjects and bringing them out in all the fullness of their dimensions. Sunshine so dazzles from Amorsolo's brush that, as an American critic at one of the United States world fairs said, on viewing a painting of his, "one almost unconsciously shades his eyes." Some call Amorsolo naive for picturing his sunshine so unasham edly. If such a sensitivity and pas sion for sunshine can be reason to call a man naive, then I don't mind being called naive. We share a love for the same thing: sunshine. Surely, naiveness must be something to be proud of, in these days of sophistication and frustration. In books I never fail to catch the mood of the writer from the way he portrays or speaks of light or of sunshine. Remember in Douglas' "Magnificent Obsession" where a man gets so obsessed with a secret for making use of a power that is always waiting to be tapped? And whenever he feels the inflow of such wonderful power, as the author put it, it was always as if he saw a door opening in his mind and light, brilliant as sunshine, came in and dazzled him through with the magnificence of it. There's a book, too, which though I've never read, bears a title I've never forgotten, "Sun in Their Eyes." Have you ever walked with the sun in your eyes? Try it some morning or afternoon, walking down a quiet road or street towards the sun... actually getting the sun in your eyes. It's blinding, but it's magnificent and it lights up every fiber in your being, making you as alive as you should really be. Sunshine takes different facets of beauty depending on how you see it reflected. Odd, isn't it, that one never really sees sunshine un less it shines directly in one's eyes or is reflected from something. Ever watched the way sunshine trembles imprisoned in a drop of water, turn ing the liquid to solid light? Or the way sunshine was splintered by some jewel into a rainbow of colors? Did you know sunshine has a pattern. . . the pattern of whatever it shines upon? It may take the pattern of a flaming canna flower ... or of hills in early morning. . . or of a kitten playing on the floor. . . or of a loved one's face. Sunshine is like a manifestation of happiness: a smile, or a bit of laughter. Sunshine livens and warms all that it brushes, whether it be the rain-washed earth in early morn ing, or the chilled hands of the old. Sunshine is the color of rich things whether it be gold, or the smooth fragrance of a ripened mango. Sunshine is life and purpose and activity and warmth. It kisses green immaturity into ripe gold. It brings out the fragrance of the harvest waiting to be taken in. I could continue waxing eloquent about the way sunshine affects me. But when I walk an early morning street, drenched with the sunshine I love, and as yet untouched by the dust, and arrive at the office in the headiest of spirits, the most eloquent thing I can say about the sunshine I love is embodied in the trite words: "Gee, but it's good to be alive." October, 1951 Page 13