The span in the distance is the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge - (1964). The Potomac is a mud-brown river. However, on certain occasions the twilight sky turns it cobalt-blue.
(August 27, 2009) Senator Kennedy died as I was working on this page. However, I was not thinking about Ted Kennedy when I shot these photos. Rather this recent series of sunsets are a meditation on my father's death.
In ancient Egypt the dead king was placed on a sun-bark as part of his journey to the land of the dead. In a recent article in the New York Review of books, for example, there is a funeral stela in which the blue sky goddess Nut, who swallows the sun at the end of the day, and the blue god Atum, the god of the setting sun, are implored to protect the deceased. See: "The Charms of Ancient Egypt," by Ingrid D. Rowland in the July 2, 2009 issue of the New York Review of Books. (Funerary stela of Lady Taperet c. 700 BC - Louvre Art Museum).
"... The rising and setting suns were venerated as two separate gods; the later, with his waning strength, colored blue. Every night he prepared to make a journey underneath the earth from which his people could only hope that he would emerge again in his guise as the rising sun. Human beings were destined to head for the same realm as the setting sun, an ominous time of day but one of particular beauty; hence the Egyptians personified "the Beautiful West" as a gorgeous young woman, lithe and sensual."
Ingrid D. Rowland, "The Charms of Ancient Egypt," at page 17 of the July 2, 2009 edition of The New York Review of Books.
In Roman times, you have the journey over the river Styx. And at the end of the 1981 movie "Excalibur" King Arthur's body is taken away by boat to the mythical Avalon.
