Sun comes up, sun goes down
Another day in a long long line of bone-dry, heat-wavey, pavement-baking days. The August sun comes up, the August sun goes down. No rain.
I wake up with a headache, I think from being dehydrated even though I drink plenty of water. I sit at my window and watch the sweet hill country sunrise; the dirty steel-grey city is like a veil over the sunrise that goes on anyway, pink over peach over rose-blush horizon, diamond morning star in the dark-fading to pale-blue sky. Pristine and perfect in itself, veil or no veil, the sunrise is there behind and beyond our unnatural constructions.
Some corner of me expects the veil to lift so I can see the whole sunrise unimpeded and all the stars at night, too, down to the horizon like in the desert, millions and millions of tiny sparkling lights, always there behind the sickly orange and green glow of mercury vapor lamps.
They are all still there. I know this. I look at the night sky and I see the absence of all those stars. I can’t look at the sky without remembering what’s not there. That’s why I see the city as a veil when I look at the sunrise. I know what it’s like without the buildings and the dirty air.
But what do the children see? Do they know about all the stars, not from some TV show but with their own eyes? Have they felt the hush and miracle of standing on flat ground in the desert and feeling the stars surround them like a jeweled shawl? Have their spirits been lifted from sleep into wakefulness on the wings of a perfect sunrise? Will they have these touchstones to go back to as they try to navigate their way through the rough years ahead?
What more could we give our children than the sense of all life on this planet moving in harmony with the sun coming up, the sun going down, all the rivers flowing, the pounding surf, the magnificence of a snowstorm, the obliteration of a heat wave, the whimsical winds of change, the enduring serenity of the mountains? Will we encompass it all and find our true place once again?