6:30 pm in october is transitory. everyone seems to be waiting for the conductor's raised hands; the city settles into its kodachrome tenor saxophone solo blue hour folded hands composure, and the low-kelvin incandescence of rented apartments blooms from the windows of every victorian in baker, dusty and soft and constant. the glass pouring down the sides of the TIAA-CREF tower downtown holds sentimental reflections of the sunset they're still celebrating out West, and nothing makes a place feel like a place people live more than church bells marking the half-hour. 

the bells tumble incoherently in the dry twilight, talking absentmindedly over the contented hum of sodium lights by the basketball courts in Sunken Gardens Park, and the royal portrait of nimbostratus clouds is painted, immobile, over the deep independence blue of the heavens, like the backdrop of a once-great wild west theater; poised in anticipation for the evening to bring the next performances.