Sunrise
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Dawn breaks at a later hour this deep into fall, which makes sunrises easy to come by for late risers. Just past seven o’clock, the first pronouncement of day is the band of pink sky on the horizon and above it bands of purple and blue.
I sit hunched in my daughter’s bedroom looking out on the block. From the second floor, the houses across the street appear distant and dark, almost unreachable, the way they might seem from across a river. In the strange light, the street becomes a deep divider with strong undercurrents.
The shade is partially lowered and the window panes come together at the immense vertical bar down the middle of the glass. Around me toys are scattered and turned on their sides, asleep, but beginning to stir as the room warms with light.
Annie’s bed is a mess with tusseled pillows and sheets kicked over. Toward the foot of the bed, are more toys she abandoned in her sleep and then spead when she awoke irritable and not yet ready to open her eyes. This morning, she’s already downstairs at the breakfast table. Her mother is dishing out breakfast and brewing coffee. Everyone is awake already and I’ve snuck upstairs to see this event I normally sleep through.
I squat further down to see under the window shade. Though it wouldn’t disturb anyone to raise it, I leave it be because the moment feels quiet. Rarely is the sky this brilliant without lightning shooting through it in in white veins of electricity. This morning couldn’t be clearer though and the threatening feeling is minimal, it’s buried in the brilliant heavely colors, the bands of light that appear thick and never ending. They must partially be a trick of the eye for no pilot or sailor out on or above the Atlantic has reported traveling though the purple skies. They are merely a vision, a temporary one at that, a beautiful one that’s there for comparison to other beautiful things.
So I sit on a miniature bench made for little girl’s work dresser and watch the colors that are a figment of my imagination in a moment I so seldom see, attracted by the aesthetics. Colors are glorious but there only few perceptible to the eye and for a moment, I imagine a world where there are beautiful colors, but they are the opposite of these, never before seen.
The orange light has taken over the whole horizon with the purple and blue traces nothing more than accent marks. The orange brilliant fades and their is a waiting period, the sun the great showman delaying his entrance, whipping the crowd into a frenzy. The trees wave gently, their heads sticking up over the rooftops and stealing a glance to see when the great I’d has entered the room.
Suddenly, the whole world lightens a shade, even the shadows and the ares that won’t be immediately lit by the sun. The colors in the sky dull a shade thenselves but stay vivid. They are just more alight now. The underbellies of the clouds turn pale and the world waits again and then, there it is, the half-rounded top, shimmering with orange colors stretching through it.
The sky is there at all times for everyone to see, but this sunrise – seen from such a lofty place – seems to belong only to me.
