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

[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...