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7-19-02 // 10.40 am it seems like the daylight is coming NP: Counting Crows - "Hard Candy" Work is keeping me busy today, but I'm making good progress so I'm taking a few minutes to write an entry. The alarm goes off at 6.15 every weekday morning. I wake up, and it's already fully light outside. Well, the sun is still halfway between the horizon and directly overhead, but it's definitely not half light. I've never been a big fan of sunrises (dusk is my favorite time of day, though), but I did come to appreciate them a bit more a few winters ago, when I worked an early shift on a beer delivery truck. I had to get up at 5am for that job, had to be at work by 6 o'clock. This was the middle of winter...late December, early January. That time of year the sun doesn't come up till like seven o'clock. So I'd have been up, gotten ready for work, driven to work, and been out on the job for a few hours before the sun would even begin to peek over the horizon. My usual first thought was "I can't believe I'm awake this early". That thought stuck with me throughout my tenure at the job. Though after awhile, I did come to enjoy the way the world looks at sunrise. It's dusk, but in reverse. Which is probably why I don't like it so much...I prefer the general fade to black. Not sure why, but yeah. Anyway, I remember pausing for a few moments once I realized the sun was coming up. Usually I'd be lifting a bunch of cases of beer onto a dolly, or struggling with several metal tap barrels. But no matter what I was doing, I'd pause for a second to admire the colors, the fire red and deep orange...the way everything around me was cast in a kind of pale, gray light. I also liked looking west, towards the part of the sky that was still dark. I always think about things when I notice that parts of the sky are still light and others are still dark. I think about how if you ran the opposite direction of the sunrise, at a quick enough speed, it'd stay night. One of my favorite summertime activities is driving around at night. Maybe around 11pm or so, when it's finally truly dark. I like noticing the way streetlights and storefronts try to shove their light through the haze that sticks in the air, even after the sun has gone down. Sometimes I like to ride around with the AC on, taking everything in from my protective bubble of Arctic air. Other times, I roll down the windows, let my left arm hang out, and feel the warm air blowing on my face and through my hair. Either way, there's something particularly calming about driving around like that. It's a good time for thinking, for singing at the top of your lungs, for just feeling alive. Not that I don't feel alive at other times, but this way just seems to amplify the effect. I'm a big fan of driving around with Erin. Especially at night. Just going somewhere, anywhere. It takes all of the things I mentioned above, and then adds the dimension of conversation and closeness. I think we have some of our best conversations en route to somewhere. Or often, to nowhere in particular. There are few things that feel more perfect than driving around with Erin, feeling the wind in our hair, holding her hand or putting my arm around her, and talking. A lot of the times, we don't even have to say anything. The understanding is implicit in the silence. It's beautiful. Much like Erin is. She's striking. She's so beautiful. She's radiant...I love watching her move, I love watching her alseep, I love talking with her. She's intelligent, she's well spoken, and she's thoughtful. I'm not sure if people even value the art of conversation anymore, but I do. And finding someone like her who's so good at it...well, it's incredible. Everything about her is. This morning, she was standing in the bathroom, getting ready after taking a shower. I poked my head in to say something, stood sort of behind her, and as I went to leave, I caught her reflection in the mirror. The way her hair framed her face, the look in her eyes, the half-smile on her lips...I dunno, it was amazing. I think about her constantly, if you couldn't already tell. I'm pretty sure I could go on all day in here, but I have to get back to work now. So I'm out...thankfully it's almost the weekend.
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