Winter Morning

If you pay attention to my work, you have probably seen dozens of sunset images by now and few, if any, sunrises. That is, of course, because I'm a night owl, and over the years, despite major life changes with school and work, I've managed to maintain a fairly similar schedule. 

Simply put, in the morning I think that the world is surely coming to an end, daily, whereas at night I feel like signing (I can't sing). 

A few weeks ago, I spent a bit of time on the mountain: in fact, this was the Catholic Christmas Eve. Something got me up early that morning—even my dog was still asleep. As I walked past a window, I noticed a quiet lilac world with a waning Moon at the center.

If there were any sleep left in me before that point, considering the 3 am bedtime, it was gone.

It is never possible to transmit the full experience (even if the aesthetic elements are there, the sound and scent are not). Yet by documenting if not a 360-, then a 270-degree view with selected detail, this is as close to giving you the sense of what it was like as one could possibly get.

This experience ended up being one of the only instances when I did not feel the impending morning Apocalypse.

Peace.

The End of August Gray (part ii)

 ...And then around 6 o'clock the next morning, when every self-respecting night owl should have been sound asleep, else defying its very essence, it finally happened.

The Gray gorged up too much of itself. To top that off, the growing belly ache from swallowing the Sun the day earlier was not helping either.

It exploded. 

It was then that the Sun peeked out from the blue mountain ribbons. Frankly, it was getting a little tired of going through the same exercise every few weeks with the same result.  "Sisyphean labor," it scoffed. 

The Sun was a staunch Heideggerian.

But sometimes, when no one was looking, it engaged in its guilty pleasure of choice--historic existentialist literature. Only a little! 

 

Then the Sun recalled that it was much higher up the totem pole than the Gray--indeed, some would say, at the very top. (The Moon always disagreed.)  So, it illuminated the valley.

Though considering the sheer magnitude of the Gray's most recent gluttony, bits and pieces of its shredded amorphous body floated over certain sleep-deprived night owls' heads for hours to come.

They were occasionally pushed over by the Wind revealing the Water. "Divide the task into manageable segments!", the Wind used to say.