Some nights I need to get some fresh air. So I go sit by the lake and watch sunsets and smoke cigarettes. Tonight was a particularly majestic sunset. Even the barges were beautiful as they chugged furiously, overburdened, towards the fog-filled edge of the earth (as far as I can see) where the clouds had trapped luminous purples and reds and managed to hold onto them for a few minutes, while I sat admiring this most lovely of panoramas and puffing cigarettes and pondering things, as any person, when spending long periods of time alone, will tend to do.

When night had fully fallen and nothing profound had come to me, I drove home the long way, unenthusiastic about the rest of my evening. Within mere blocks of the beach where I had just sat to ponder, the coast had managed to vanish and in its place stood the looming smoke stacks of our fair city’s antiquated coal power plant. The plant stood, stark and ugly against a newly black sky, spewing forth only the thickest and blackest of smoke onto the panorama that only minutes ago had been a picture of Mother Earth at her finest.

And then I recalled something someone had told me, or maybe I had read it somewhere, about how sunsets are only so wonderful as a result of pollution. Clouds of smog and thick black smoke trap and refract the fading sunlight, translating it to me as luminous purples and reds, a picture of Mother Earth at her finest. Suddenly I feel as though I’ve awoken from a deep nonsensical dream, and I smile at the prospect that maybe all of the sadness and ugliness of late is someday going to make something seem very beautiful.