When was the last time you really watched the sun rise?
I freely admit, it was probably back on January 1, 2000; I watched the sunrise for the “dawn of the new millenium”. Yeah, I guess I’ve always been a romantic kind of girl. I want to experience these kind of halcyon moments in life. Take them in, process them, live them.
This morning, I found myself forced to observe the sun rise over the Florida coast as I sat in awful traffic on I-95. Apparently a truck overturned and spilled Lean Cuisines all over the highway. This little snafoo (snaphu? snafu?) lengthened my usual twenty-five minutes to one hour and forty minutes!
But, with my camera handy, and the latest My Chemical Romance blasting away, I was able to relax and enjoy myself. Really. Cars honking and irate drivers on their cell phones just next to me be damned.
So, its been a while since I really watched a sunrise. I’d forgotten how the colors change every second, and each time you blink the patterns are different, the clouds have moved, the light has shifted.
No wonder people love to paint sunrises. What an amazing challenge. And I suppose if you like perspectives on light on natural scenes you might enjoy the paintings posted to Orion Magazine’s latest issue.
At any rate, these are my favorite the-car-is-moving-so-slowy-they-aren’t-even-blurred photos from the morning. From before the sun appears to its first golden halo built out of clouds.
I find that there’s something comforting in the realization that the sun is rising all along the East Coast, and that this little thing connects me to people as far away as Delaware, Philly, North Carolina, and New York. And as the planet keeps moving, the sun I enjoy around 10 a.m. is the same sun rising over Las Vegas and starting to light up the west coast in California.
Its kinda surreal when you really consider it. The sunrises I experience are someone else’s noon; our sunsets are the beginnings of a new day somewhere in the Pacific.
Salty Like Crocodile 