The Platonic ideal I have of “dawn” comes from my childhood in Florida, where the sky is an enormous kid who fingerpaints herself, and she is both exuberant and very, very serious in the focused way children sometimes are; so there are moments of pause, moments of held breath when the sky simply sits still and says Look at me for a while, and then we’ll go on to the next thing.
By my standards there is no dawn in Seattle these days; it’s more that the light simply comes on when it’s supposed to. Blue-black sky, streetlights with frosty halos, an edge of moon and then someone flicks the switch and poof, it’s morning and everything is thin: the translucent pale blue film across the sky; the cold thin sunlight that seems not quite there, as if it’s coming in on conference call; the thin shadows of the people at bus stops, the way they clutch their coats closed and squint into the distance looking for the bus.
I saw today come on through the windows of the gym. I’ve been feeling stressed and just a little beaten down around the edges, and I didn’t expect that looking up from my sore self and seeing a slice of blue sky, crows shaking out their feathers against the few orange and yellow leaves still left on the trees, would make me feel better; but it did. I don’t know why, and I don’t need to. I do know that I found myself thinking of the word daybreak, and realizing it’s the wrong word. There is nothing broken about the day.
I’m with you there, kid. I’m always glad to have another one.
Looking out at the solid white sky we’ve had here in ‘north central’ for several days, I have to add a hearty ‘yeah.’
I kinda appreciate the gray and white skies and dirty old muddy freezing and thawing snowscapes here, partly thanks to my dog who loves to roll in anything – legs in the air, back-swishing happy in leaves, mud, snow, brown slush, dead fish by the drainage ditch ‘lake.’ But a glimpse of blue (and blue herons) always lifts my spirits like nothing else.
Barbara, me too. I wish that I always remembered that when I’m feeling stressed.
Hey, Carrie. I don’t mind the gray when we get it here, it can be sometimes soothing and sometimes quite dramatic… but if it goes on for too many days in a row, I get a little squirrelly. I sincerely hope it’s not going to be one of those winters.