Shabbos Rest

I got up for breakfast at 8am, saw the Fikes off, and went back to bed. I was too stuffy to sleep but I moved my sleeping bag out to the huge porch and spent the day resting fitfully in the warm shade, reading my book and the parsha, falling asleep, sitting up to drink some tea, laying right back down. At about 3pm, I thought it was high time to get up. I took a cool shower to try to wash the sick sweat off, and felt much better, I made motzei, ate lunch, and continued to read and rest. Bill Fike taught me this awesome home-remedy for congestion that saved me today. One teaspoon of salt in 8oz of warm water, put it in a syringe, and flush it up one nostril until it comes out the other nostril. The salt pulls the fluid out of the boggy nasal membranes, and opens everything up. It made all the difference. So I pretty much was only conscious for the end of Shabbos, but I have to describe to you what it is like to watch the sun set from my porch overlooking the Andes:

The porch is a natural, earthen, red. It is quite large, and retains the heat of the day, so walking on it in bare feet allows you to soak up the sun through your soles. As the late afternoon comes, there is a brief, cool breeze, the changing of the guard, and as quickly as it came, it dies down. Beyond the green haven that my porch inhabits is lots of brown and yellow fields. The end of the corn husks being toted away by wheelbarrow. A peasant, knee deep in mud, churning it with his feet into smooth material to make the bricks of the mud huts. An escaped goat wanders along the road, munching happily on the other side of his fence. The daytime sounds of children's play, cows offended by the milkers, lots and lots of dogs barking at each other. Long shadows reveal the undulations of the mountains, each wave casting darkness on the next. Then the light drops away. An evening bird sings its night song as the children are called in by their mothers. It is suddenly cool and blue. The mountains looks flat, like disney-world facades which I could push over with a nudge of my toe. Jagged dimensionless silhouettes against a duskblue sky. The world falls quiet, with only the indistinguishable sounds of a nearby brook and the breeze. Everything is so still, you can hear the footfalls of the last people walking home on the dusty road. Tall, feathery eucalyptus trees rustle and sway, as if on their own. A yellow light comes on here or there in the huts. One star. Right in the middle of the sky. The twilight is heavy, it is difficult to see through, as if mist or dust formed a screen around the porch. And then it is night. Clear, perfect night. Thick heavy but perfectly transparent blackness, punctuated only by the stars.