Over the past two years I’ve seen more sunrises than in all the years before that. It seems I’ve been rushing around during each one; to catch ferries, planes, to make it to work for the breakfast shift, or waiting for sobriety to envelop me and help me cope with sleep. A mixed handful of reasons have forced me up that early, or to still be awake that late, each leagues apart, both essential. The sunrise is a long, slow process, especially when you are waiting for it, and I’m in a perpetual state of wait. For what? you may ask, but that question I still can't answer.
I find it strange that such emphasis is always put on catching the sunset. It’s so depressing – the slow, bitter end of another day, watching everything you’d wished for fading to black, literally. It strikes me as an ending. A sunrise contains so much more promise, hope and excitement. Things seem ahead of you, instead of behind you, and that is exciting. What will the new day bring? How can we make sure it doesn’t pass us by like the last? Where will we end up?
A burly old biker once told me about his days lambing up north; that sheep generally give birth at sunrise. He spoke of those days so beautifully, so tenderly, with such poetry in his words that I'll never be able to reproduce it here. The hour before sunrise, still in darkness, they sit relaxed in their field, breathing deeply, calmly, naturally, knowing what is incoming. "I used to sit there, smoking a little, breathing deeply, and waiting to work. That hour, when the sun pushes up, is the best hour to be alive," he told me, wisely. "People have been doing just the same for centuries, forever, how can it not make you feel your existence worthy, in a way? Experiencing something so pure, so natural? So engrained!" His eyes were closed, holding back a nostalgic tear, allowing me to look at his serious face and listen. To really listen. Being deep in melancholia at the time I twisted his words round and thought: 'I'd like to die at sunrise.'
The trusty market traders see the sunrise every morning, and they don’t seem to even notice its imminence. Apart from us, the whole town is asleep. It is quiet and it is eerie; a ghost town in the truest sense of the term. Instead of tumbleweeds rolling through the dusty streets, a ripped sheet of cardboard dances a pirouette on the pavement. There is something very sobering about a new day breaking over you, like a cold shower; when the cool air stings your nostrils and cigarettes never tasted quite so good. When all is peaceful and calm.
I woke early a while ago - before sunrise - because I couldn’t get to sleep. Having failed at nodding back off I just decided to go for a walk; the best way to kill some time, and the activity I’d least be likely to engage in at sunrise. A field and a hill at the edge of town were my destination, and there I planned to sit down and scratch some notes as the sun rose. Like a journalist I’d cover the assignment, and gain both an impression and an understanding through the job. I’d come out with something, damn it, if only half a dozen illegible scribbles.
Stepping out from home the atmosphere felt un-pressured, the wind non-existent, the birds were only just starting to sing their dawn chorus of turf war. As positive as I may have painted a sunrise there was still a sadness over the land, a certain melancholy on my own part. Not only was I running out of smokes, which I’d need for this morning, but a mountain of regrets built up as I walked and thought about things. Why hadn’t I caught more sunrises? When was the last time I watched the sunrise? With a girl? Why had I never made love by birdsong?
Racing across town I saw one or two people, camouflaged by the dark. Everyone else was asleep in safety and dark at home. As the light grew and the sun rose ever so slightly the lines on my face seemed to get deeper. I felt like I was aging on the spot, like a reverse Britten. Here was the first appearance of the thing from which all life springs, and it felt like it! Nathan was coming the other way, out of nowhere. We stopped. I explained the situation. “I get that sometimes,” he admitted.
“What?” I asked.
“The insomnia,” he said, and that gave me another thing to worry about and mull over. One sleepless night does not an insomniac make, I reminded myself.
I soon reached my vantage point and settled in, ready to watch the sunrise and analyse it. I mean to really watch the sunrise. The colours painting the sky were vibrant enough; mostly a murky yellow, with some peachy patches. With nothing else on my mind I considered the world for a long moment; life, death, sunrise, sunset, love or lack thereof, and waded through both the positives and negatives in my own existence. I wished I could be as regular as the sun. I longed for a routine and a purpose as important as that.
All my time had been dedicated to the pursuit of idle time and recreation, trying to prolong youth for as long as possible, and as much as I had wanted that at one point I didn’t want it anymore. I was tired of following the creative maxim ‘do what thou wilt,’ and living like a self-imposed pariah, shunning responsibilities, trying to stay like Peter Pan. I still felt like a lost little boy - nothing had changed in me. All through my early-twenties I had suffered and all through my teens I had endured and it had been for what? For fucking what? To pursue what I liked doing and avoid any discomfort? There had been some major emotional setbacks to pass through and I'd missed out on some critical rites of passage between youth and adulthood. Something had to change if I were to progress with my own life; something big, something worthwhile and something enjoyable. I'd been arrested by myself - trapped, with no way out. Life seemed like an endless sunset, and it should have felt like a sunrise.
A lyric came to mind and repeated itself over, just like the song. “I took the wrong step years ago," I sang, "I took the wrong step years ago." Whoever had led me to believe doing what I wanted with my life would be the best option? They hadn't mentioned it would be such a challenge. That should have been told sooner, I seemed to be too far down the line now, living life like a monastic vagabond. A paradox in itself. Without chasing this constant first day of spring I'd have never ended up here, on Juniper Hill, watching colours appear and swirl in the sky. I'd also have been left with little time after work to think with.
There comes a point in the sunrise when you think you've seen it all. Thinking that the sun is the only thing involved, you forget about the sky. There comes a point when you don't think you could ever change, that this is the person you are, and the person you always will be. But humans are constantly in a state of change; mental, physical, spiritual change. You shouldn't wait for that to come to you. Like sunrise it's already coming, like the sky it's already moving along - it's something you have to look towards and to accept.
When you reveal one of these truths to yourself a weight is cast off. How had it been possible not to understand like that before? All the pieces of the puzzle were there, counted out and present, but you couldn't find the edges. You wait for the simple revelation over the course or weeks, months, or years. When the sun rises a new day roars along the road in second, pushes into third, fourth, takes the roundabout at speed and flies off on its journey; just like the early morning drivers rushing to work in their suits or overalls.
