The Sun Also Rises

In moving from West to East I have taken the opposite path of the very sun. I’ve gone from peace-inducing evenings of sunsets to eye-widening mornings of sunrises. It’s the sun, it seems to me now, that shapes the cultures of the two coasts.

On the West coast, the sun was seducingly sedative. Every evening, I would peek out of the corner of my kitchen window at the ocean. Or I’d walk down to the sand to feel its breezes. The sun would set slowly at first, lazily strolling across the sky. But as it reddened and tightened into a little ball, it would suddenly and very visibly quicken its way through the draining sky. Finally, it would dip beneath the waves and I’d be left with the cooling, magical realm that is twilight. It was so easy to surrender yourself to the beauty and simplicity around you. But then, that could also leave you complacent and stale…which is what would have happened to me had I overstayed my time there.

Here on the East Coast the sun is quite the opposite. It comes raging out of the East River, the jagged skyscrapers absorbing its light and reflecting it back a thousand-fold like so many jeweled attendants. The windows of my apartment – all which share the Western wall, unobscured by obscurities - are temporarily blinded. The temperature of my apartment is immediately warmed by several degrees, even on the more winter-like mornings. Like a vampire, I hiss and reach for a non-existent marble lid that will block out this beast. But there is no sleeping in late by such windows.

This is a city where the sun itself orders you to get your big butt out of bed and carpe damn diem. I’m beginning to learn I better do exactly as he says.