The eye that burns

[gfish]

I was surprised, in my inanimate object post, to see how many people listed the sun. Greeting the sun would never, ever occur to me. Partly just because, well, I can't really look at it. Beyond that, though, I guess I only really notice the sun when I resent it. Part of that is residual middle-school geek posturing, probably, but really I quite enjoy outdoors physical activity these days. Sunrise means an all-nighter is over, and people are going to start waking up soon. It means the magical time of quiet isolation and productivity is over. It means a jarring transition from cool, mysterious pre-dawn to glaring, tacky, high-contrast day. It can also mean the heat of the day is about to start, something I often dread. The Mackenzie trip didn't help any -- a full month of being constantly aware of the sun, and generally resenting how hard it was to get to sleep.

(The only circumstances I can remember being glad to see the sun rise are unlikely to be repeated. Last January at the Inauguration, after standing in the -5 degree freezing cold for 3 hours, hoping for some warmth. And after our first night on the Columbia, when I couldn't sleep and paced the beach for a couple hours waiting until I could wake the others and get going.)

So, yeah. The night holds the key.

Comments

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

The key to what?

;)

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I dunno, it's early.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

*wiggle*

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Sorry, had to run to a supervisor meeting. Thanks for picking up on your line. :)

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Huh. I generally get up well before sunrise. The sun usually still makes it up before I'm done doing forms... I have an involved relationship with the sun, but I like dawn an awful lot. It always feels very clean. Not so many of other people's thoughts cluttering things up.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love dawn right up until the sun appears. Then everything that is neat just turns off like a switch for me. It's the house lights coming on after the play is over. But the fact that I almost never see it except at the end of an all-nighter definitely influences this view. I never want those to end.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

For me a lot of the magic is the displacement from normal society. Dawn at 4am in the summer is much cooler than dawn at 8 in winter (with a partial exception for longest night, because usually by dawn I'm ready for dawn). And I can deal with the quiet fellowship of morning people, too. When I was at MS, all the bikers and runners would get in hours before everyone else, and we'd be perky and productive... and then around ten we'd go hide in our offices so as not to be lynched.

Of course, I also really like that camaraderie one gets at 2am in the datacenter...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I felt similarly about the sun for a long time.

I still have a love-hate relationship with it. Don't like being *in* it but I do love the rich saturated colors you get with it.

Well, actually, in the four months when Tennessee actually gets cold, I do like being in it. But that's less than half the time.

[jadine.livejournal.com]

Why do your all-nighters end when the sun comes up?

When I was in college, the quiet time bracketed sunrise - there were often noisy people up until dawn, and very few people got up until way after sunrise.

These days, I can keep going until noon and barely even notice sunrise if I'm focusing.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Daylight is so gauche!

Darkness is the new black!

The sun is the diurnal death of astronomy--at least until we get our sunspots back.

[ionan.livejournal.com]

I hated the sun until I moved to Seattle. Now I can't get enough o' dat shit. In Florida it was just there all the goddamn time, and going out in it was out of the question. Now that I only get a few weeks of clear, sunny days in the Northwest, I treasure it a lot more. Also, the sunlight doesn't seem as harsh and hostile here.

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

Greeting the sun would never, ever occur to me. Partly just because, well, I can't really look at it. Beyond that, though, I guess I only really notice the sun when I resent it.

Have you had a look at my nocturnal filk musical (http://orawnzva.livejournal.com/63075.html)? Question diurnal-normativity! (Seriously, since writing "Walk in the Day", it's become much harder for me to take turns of phrase which assume a diurnal moral orientation for granted... which may not have been the most useful kind of privilege to unpack first.)