Sunrise: a love story

downtown berkeley, 7:10 am 

It is only in the last year that I've really gained an appreciation for the unique qualities of dawn & sunrise. Of course I'm a lifelong fan of sunsets, and I've seen a lot more of them because I'm generally awake then, but for most of my life I made an effort not to see the sunrise. If I ever saw sunrise, it meant I either stayed up all night (bad) or woke up at what I called "too early o'clock" (also bad, as I used to claim I simply could not function as a human being if I rose before 7am).

I don't know what happened to me, but when I was 29 suddenly I wanted to get up as early as I could and enjoy the day as early as possible. I think it's because a) I suddenly have a much more acute awareness of the passing of time, and I don't want to miss anything; and b) I seriously crap out by 3pm and am really useless for most of the afternoon/early evening, so I might as well get up really early and enjoy some productivity before afternoon comes. So I changed my work schedule and started getting up at 5:30am. The benefit of all this is that I get to leave work around 3:45 and still have time to enjoy the day when I get home -- and do things like run, do errands, play video games, etc. It's a quality of life thing.

So now I see sunrise a lot. And it is almost always beautiful. I'm not sure if I live in a particularly good "sunrise zone" or if it's like this everywhere, but each sunrise is majestic in its own unique way. It's hard to explain how they're different from sunsets except to point out that sunsets go from light --> color and sunrise goes from dark --> color. There's something a bit more mysterious about a sunrise. It brings color to a dark, silent world, a new world ready for a new day. That's a really beautiful thing to watch.

This morning had the added bonus of an enormous full moon slowly setting in the western sky as the sun rose in the east -- it was gorgeous. I love it when the moon hangs low and looks so much larger.

downtown berkeley w/ moon, 7:10am