Saturday 4 December 2004

Pic of the day: Since I did not bring my camera, please take this screenshot from City of Heroes instead. In the foreground the superhero known only as The Were-porcupine. (Guess who...)

Saturdawn

Somehow, over the last few weeks, the day has been turned entirely around. Now, I sleep all evening and wake up when I used to go to sleep in the good old days. And so it was that, as dawn was breaking, I was out walking. This is Norway in December, so dawn was between 8 and 9, and I was on my way to the shop. (It opens at 9, but it is half an hour to walk to get there.)

I had reached the top of the hill when I stopped to just look. A grey blanket of clouds covered almost all of the sky, and another the horizon. But between them was an opening where the clouds were thin and even the faintest trace of blue could be seen. The sun had reached this place "between sheets" and bathed the hill in a mild glow, not full sunshine but so much more than the gloom of the overcast day that lay ahead. And for a long time I just stood there, unwilling to let such beauty go unseen. I knew that if I went back to fetch my camera, the special light would be gone before I was back. If it even could be caught with a camera.

Today I looked at the brief display of morning beauty and listened to Chris de Burgh. I have copied many of his songs - all legally bought and paid for - to my Zen Micro MP3 player. I played one called "The last moments of the dawn". It is really a sugary love song. (Like, ooh, last night I had no idea that I would ever fall in love, and especially not with you, and now we're about to make love, wheee!) Not excactly my style (and definitely not Jesus' style) but I didn't mind, though, it was pretty music. And it's not like there is any opportunity to act on it, even if I would, which I wouldn't.

I sometimes think I look at women the same way I look at sunrises, sunsets and rainbows. Sometimes they are just so beautiful, it feels like not watching them would be to turn down a precious gift, or let some valuable natural resource just run out into the sea unused. I wonder if other people feel that way too. When something is beautiful and fleeting, it is rare and precious. Youth and dawn are like that. You can't claim the beauty of the rising sun struggling to shine through the clouds, you can't make it stay and you can't make it yours except as a memory. But it is a memory that makes me part of it rather than the other way around.

And then I moved on, and so did the sun.