Friday, and I watch the sun rise over the LA airport. It’s industrial art and it wedges its way into my cranial creases. I don’t mind.
In my life, a sunrise has almost always had a salutary effect, even when what is revealed is boxy urban blight. Because there’s a moment somewhere in that span when it’s just you and the sun. And a harmonic is set up.
Sure, there have been those days when the sun was unwelcome because it rose out of time and turn. Oh–and I blamed it. Blamed the sun because it was always me that had to change. Never it. Always me that had to reorient and resynchronise.
I did have a choice. And I applied it at times. I would go off scolding the new light –refuse to straighten my bed. My petulance and anger would shame it until I imagined it dipping back behind the broad line. But it just roared, laughing at me from behind my burning curtain, until I relinquished and received its turning.
There will always be the discordant notes that flatten or crash-up our day. But sometimes, even in death, there is a rhythm that feels, if not right, at least not altogether a discomfort.
The news today is that a relative has died–my brother-in-law’s mother. The news was not unexpected.
Her’s was an ordinary hard working life full of giving. A life that felt all the flats and sharps, and lived the gleaming and the dark gloaming of many days. Spared neither the waves of pain or joy.
There was no surprise ending here. Just a timely setting of a ripe and ready life. The sun set in full view.
