Sky watching.
Forced to wake up at 5 a.m. every morning out of habit, I began to notice the sky and its slight, gradual shifts in color through the early hours. It all begins with a gradient of dark navy blue. It makes me wonder whether the sky is actually black at night, or just an even darker shade of blue. There’s the occasional passing car, but the only other sign of life is the traffic light, tirelessly tending to its duty. Imperceptibly, the blueness fades, as if a new piece of clothing were being washed for the first time. Just as my eyes start to anticipate the shift in color, the streetlight clicks off, and for a moment it feels like night all over again, as if nature’s rituals were about to replay, as though what came before had only been a dress rehearsal. That sudden event completely resets my expectations. I notice how dark everything really is without the glow of artificial light in the morning. It feels almost like a proclamation to the whole wide world that morning is coming, a final relinquishing of the artificial to the natural.
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Minutes later, a ripple of yellow appears on the horizon, breaking apart the blue with distinct streaks of bright white in between. The blue nearly disappears as the sun rises out of its long sojourn, and I begin to wonder if the sky is really blue at all. Some mornings, the rays slip between the trees and make their presence known before they’re even high enough to clear the rooftops. Other mornings, the light seems to lose its strength and takes its time reaching its peak. And some mornings, there’s no distinct ray at all, blocked entirely by overbearing clouds. But the contention between white and blue always seems to end the same way, with blue prevailing, forming the sky we know.
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