Friday, February 11, 2011

the rise and fall of the sun on Montrose Avenue

As I walked to work today down Montrose Avenue toward the L station named after the same said road, the sun was coming up over what I have always assumed to be a cement factory off in the distance. It was peaking out, the bright little scribble of red light, thrilling and also maddening to be on the cusp of night and day, thrilling because what a beautiful moment, and yet maddening when you think of how little sleep you just got and how actually insanely early I am up each day, how it might actually be objectively insane to be up so early each day. So you know, there are those competing sensations. This morning, though, the thrilling part of this duel clearly winning. What a beautiful thing it is to witness a new day dawning most mornings. Sunsets have their glory - everyone's always raving about them, and for good reason, however the pleasures of a sunrise are in comparison hardly ever enumerated by people I know. But let just make it clear in case you don't know: They are awesome. They are often the one good thing about waking up so early - getting to see the sky change colors so quickly, our planet spinning and spinning in and out of the reach of the sun's rays, but in this moment that occurs each day, often coinciding with my walk to work, the rays of the that huge Sun out there are just starting to again reach your little spot of Earth. You will for the briefest of moments straddle the border between night and day, a foot in each land, and the pleasure we got from that is a pleasure born from the analogy some back reach of our mind vaguely is feeling out, that this is a small scale version of life, that the fleeting ability to witness that moment, so quickly over, day suddenly brightly here, hints at how quickly our own path is between our rising and our sinking into darkness, that it all happens so fast, that so soon it's over, that it will be over real soon. And we have some temporary relief, despite our existential sickness, because we will at least outlive that sunset and probably the next day's. It really does set one back incredibly to take in these daily things, sunrises and sunsets, that they break my heart sometimes, these red stretches of sky.

After getting off work today, I went to the gym and really experienced that joy that people sometimes talk about in association with exercise. My back was sore but it felt so good to use all these muscles, to stretch all these parts of my body, to feel things tighten up, if even only briefly, in ways that I want them to be tight in all the time. I went to the steam room and jerked off with a guy, older, not necessarily attractive, but I was horny and he kept stroking my dick and I certainly wasn't going to complain given how relaxing and how thrilling it felt at the same time. I rode the subway, did not stop and buy churros even though I normally would done because I was still feeling various muscles on my body tighter than normal. I read about Scientology on the way home and then getting off that subway station, coming out of those stairs, I was again greeted with the sun on the horizon of Montrose Avenue, this time in the opposite direction, heading west. I was seeing the sun rise and the sun set on the same street today. There was something very beautiful about these symmetrical and gorgeous bookends to the start and end of my work day. Change and cycles and rhythms and the march of days. It is somehow already mid-February.

No comments:

Post a Comment