No one saves us but ourselves. We ourselves must walk the path.”  
Buddha
The sky is copper-bronze, and the sun a burnished shield of cadmium orange. Streaks of thin black cirrus clouds are black silhouettes, as if painted on a Greek vase. Homer, it seems, can be addictive.
I am atop the Dune du Pilat, All around me are maybe a hundred people with exactly the same idea, here to witness the world in a state of becoming, or unbecoming as it is now evening, and to court a moment of awe. At least I hope that’s the case, because that line T. S. Eliot filched from Dante, ‘I had not thought death had undone so many,’ is drifting through my consciousness.
But I am not dead, even if some of my guests are, and nor are the people around me. Far from it. There’s chatter, and laughter, and animated conversations. This is less a mystical experience, and more like a music festival, with us, the audience, awaiting the headliners, Moon and the All Stars.
It’s seven-fifty. Sunset is listed online as eight-forty two. I’m tapping my fingers to the distant doof-doof of a boom box someone has thought to bring with them. It’s all a tad self-conscious, but I’m beginning to enjoy the absurdity of so many of us waiting reverently for a spinning rock in the void to turn a few degrees more to the east. The sun’s perfect disc is only a width away from the horizon, and I’m sure I can feel the earth’s rotation in the sun’s orbit through the sand beneath me. Or maybe it’s the rosé.
I am happy to say that most, if not all of my fellow duners, have brought their own food and drink. Many have come with blankets to sit on and whole hampers of good things           §. I had to trek some distance from the long wooden steps leading up here to find somewhere I could comfortably call my own. I’ve laid out my sleeping bag as picnic blanket, with my bottle of rosé, plucked deliciously cold from the supermarket chill cabinet, sweaty in the warm air. The very basic repas I’ve put together out of a whole pain rustique, a wedge of Comté cheese, some green olives, with fresh tomatoes, a little lettuce, and a rare tin of Dolmades, rice wrapped in vine parcels that I’m hoping will give the meal a Greek flavour. I struggled with the dessert menu and opted to keep things simple; yoghurts, framboise times two, and a bar of Milka chocolate, the one with crushed hazelnuts.
Half an hour later and the disc is a dome, as simple as a child’s drawing, and shimmering as it extinguishes itself in the wine-dark sea. To my surprise, people are leaving already, though the show is at its most grand and operatic moment. Full darkness is coming on fast and perhaps they want to negotiate the hundred and sixty-eight steps up here whilst there is still light to see by. Others are huddling together as the temperature drops, illuminated by phone screens and head torches, speaking less and in voices that are hushed by the coming on of night, and soon, we reduced to shadows and nightlights dotted over the great dune, like candles on a cake.
I’ve had all the food I want, but the others are still eating, enjoying earthly delights whilst they can. Epicurus is as good as his word, happy drinking water and contentedly munching some bread and cheese. Odysseus is somewhere out there in the dark chatting with some folk he said he’d heard speaking Greek, and he’s dragged a reluctant Marcus with him. Telling old war stories, no doubt. Nhất Hạnh and my grandfather seem to be engaged in some kind of mindfulness meditation, sitting side by side with their eyes closed with a thumb pressed against each nostril in turn. All these folk have been there for me at one time or another, usually a time of crisis, but it’s rare for me to be with any of them simply to socialise and enjoy a sunset. Rarer still to do it all together.