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August 5, 1997 Waking Up Early 5:55AM EST The sun isn't quite up yet, the light outside filters through the slats in the blinds, a bluish tinge, a fading from black into light, gradual and slow. You can tell the time by the light when it's early. Later in the day, the quality of the light becomes more uniform. It's harder to tell the difference between 8am and 7am for example, or noon and 2pm. The brightness then is almost harsh in comparison with the gentler, golden light that pervades the early morning sky. Getting up when I was younger was a matter of course. I was up at 6am every day to go to school. I went to bed between 10 and 11pm. Sometimes I read until midnight. Six to eight hours of sleep were just fine during the week, being up that early was normal. Watching the sunrise was a daily phenomenon which I would pause to admire on clear days on the slope of the road just before the high school. The yellow ball of the sun would slowly crawl up above the flat angle of the roof coloring the sky in increasingly paler colors until it all passed into that startling shade of blue which is so common in the fall. In college I became accustomed to sleeping in until at least 8:30 or 9am. I began to think of the earlier hours as ungodly times to be awake. My bed time stretched back toward midnight then 1am then 2am. Staying up all night was common, skipping early morning classes was too. Now I can't seem to break out of my nightowl schedule to accustom myself to my once-a-week early morning risings to go to work. My bed time has settled back into the 11PM range. But I can no longer get by on 7 hours of sleep. I need eight plain and simple, or I walk around with my head feeling like it's stuffed with cotton candy for the rest of the day. 10:13AM EST The light is bright and omnipresent now. That softness from the morning is gone and I cringe into my cubby feeling vaguely affronted by the attack of the light. Getting up early always has a special quiet magic to it. The world is much emptier then, the pace slower, almost graceful. People are not rushing to work yet, they glide along, still half-asleep moving towards offices and coffee-pots. Some people are coming home from working late shifts, looking red-eyed and fuzzled, occasionally glaring resentfully at the early risers who far outnumber the late-leavetakers. In that early morning quiet there is a sense of expectation, a holding of breath as if anything could happen just around the corner. The sun is rising for you alone, or conversely you can sense all of the other people looking up at the sky, drawing in a breath and releasing it at the sheer beauty of our central star. The birds, whose chirping may have annoyed you with its shrill, insistant cacophony an hour earlier when it roused you from slumber, has taken on a gentler, intermittent note, a punctuation in the music that is the beginning of the day. I still marvel at the sunrise, though getting up early no longer holds either the comfort of routine, nor as much excitement as it used to. I'm much much too tired. I can barely concentrate on where I'm going, and my usual fatigue-induced stomach upset requires the rest of my concentration so that I don't wind up losing the contents of my stomach all over the sidewalk as I wait for the bus. Serenity catches up with me from time to time, seeping into my bones, rooting me in place, face tilted up towards the light into the breeze, letting the peace of the day calm my fears and insecurities for a moment before I step off into the daily grind. Today I was more ill than usual. Chinese food late at night is not a good option, I am discovering. But the day was a priceless gem at 6:15AM, with a clear high sky interrupted only by the faintest wisps of cloud painted gold and pink by the rising sun. The breeze smelled sweet and the air was light, breathable, not the heavy humid smog that has been all too common of late. The whole neighborhood turned pink for a few moments as the sun climbed another few degrees. Then colors settled back to normal and the sky painted itself in the colors of a perfect summer day. |