“I said goodbye – not to anybody in particular, but to the town, to loneliness, to defeat and frustration, to shabby living, to sterile houses and numbed pangs, to the kind of people I had no wish to know; to an era… I shall never forget how the red ball of the sun hung on the horizon and raced along with the train for a short space, and then plunged below the belly-band of the earth. There have been other suns that set in significance for me, but that sun!”
Zora Neale Hurston (1891 -1960) Dust Tracks on a Road.
Another forgotten female who died a humble death, who has inspired the girli movement deeply.
Zora’s sun set signifies a closure of something past. There is no sense of beauty in her future at this moment, had beauty been present she would have discribed the sunrise. As the sunrises there is a sense of something new, a future which is bright with love. A sunset brings darkness and long nights, possibly alone. I’m not sure Zora ever found her sunrise, she too died of a broken heart, she too lost her mother at a young age, she too lost her family, and the father who didn’t want her was loved by others.
I love her way and it’s great depth. You can read what ever you may into the torment she suffered at such a young age. Her literary ability and her metaphorical approach is tender and I have been truly moved.
