lost in sprawl city

ruthadactyl:

Last week’s sunrise. I almost missed the bus to take it.

College has only reenforced my status as a “morning person”. I have been such type of person for my whole life, or at least as long as I can remember. Often times, especially when I was younger, this meant I woke up feeling fresh and wide awake at 5:30 A.M. and was ready to immediately take on the day.

The meaning of the identity has evolved with time and age. I may not enjoy getting up at 5:30 anymore, but within a half hour or so I can still be into high gear mode.

For 2 and a half years while I went to Umass I needed to get up everyday at 5:45 or 6:00. Weaning into your mornings is so much better and so I would watch a little news, eat breakfast, get dressed and take my time. 

Here in California if I have a 9 AM class that means waking up at 8:30. Not bad. I feel like I am sleeping in every single day. 

And during the summer when I can work in the mornings I usually get up around 7 or 8.

But anyway, how has college both reenforced and altered my morning personness? Because I savor that calm, that quiet, the sunrise, and the coolness or the early hours. People on their commute to work, tiredly blinking at pavement of the highway or the houses we pass by while riding the train. Everything looks the same as always but different from the day before. Your head might be a liitle fuzzy in the morning and you focus on aspects of the landscape, of people’s faces, of how they talk, like you never would under normal circumstances.

And here, when you are “away” at college, everyone is either asleep at 8 AM or if they must be up, they are in class trying with all their strange not to lapse back into the REM cycle. And it’s quiet, again. It’s warm. The streets are nearly empty. The bumping house music from a party a few aparments down has ceased. Horns and screeches rising from heavy traffic will not be heard until later in the day. It’s as if you are one of the few people still left on this planet. You walk and think and walk and daydream and walk and contemplate. 

Or you just walk and let the suns rays rub against your cheeks. Let the breeze massage your scalp. The rocky earth and grasses soft as compliments brusing against the soles of your feet. 

People sip their coffee and read their newspapers. Smile if you glance in their direction. And that ever faithful star returning to her post for yet another day. And I love to greet her.

(Source: d-isgruntled)