Monday, January 7, 2019

How Long Does It Take for the Sun to Rise?

Jessie Eastland source: Wikipedia 

How long does it take for the sun to rise?

I'm not in Paterson this morning. I'm somewhere from which one can watch the sun rise, cleanly. 

First, at a time when in Paterson it is still night, the horizon is ringed with red and light. About forty minutes later, a rose glow washes every tree and rock.  Then, maybe fifteen minutes after that, the crest of a gold platter breaches the line of the mountain against the sky and filters through the silhouettes of bare winter trees. 

I like sleep and bed. I have always known that slumber's escape is my drug of choice. And i've always fought their allure, tooth and nail. i wrench myself out of bed. 

I don't drink coffee so I turn my body into the jaws of life. Morning exercises, every morning. Drinking lots of juice. Much time spent in the smallest room in the house, getting dirty and scrubbing to scrupulously clean. 

I wanted to spend my few remaining pennies, my few remaining minutes on earth, working robotically and blinded through my morning routine, something  I do every morning in a Paterson apartment-without-a-view.  Not devote time to watching a timeless miracle, while I am lucky enough to be somewhere where I can see it with no man-made obstructions. 

We humans always seem so good and focusing on the mundane and ignoring the miraculous. 

I actually googled, "how long does it take the sun to rise?"

And then of course the inevitable questions concatenated. Does a sun rise last as long as a moonrise? Does it matter if it is summer or winter, distant from  or near the equator? 

I had no idea of the answers to any of these questions. 

Google helpfully completed the question for me. How long does it take to get to Mars? For SAT results? To boil an egg ? 

In the end, I abandoned the question ... and I watched the sun rise. 


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