I scribbled this in the margins of the paperback haiku collection I’ve been writing in because I left my journal at home (insufferably romantic, I know). I am just getting to post it several days later because I have hardly been around the internet so far– too much to see irl! 

my knees, Lufthansa blanket

May 4, 2013. Early. Over Europe. 

All its use as a cliched symbol aside, watching a sunrise really holds up. It’s pretty remarkable. I have a window in my Brecon bedroom that gets a lot of morning sun but doesn’t catch the sunrise directly. I keep the blinds wide open at all times because I am a deep sleeper and the sun through my window helps me wake up. I love waking up early enough to lie facing my bedroom window and watch the sky become a different sky. It is a pleasure.

This morning, I’m not sure what time (we were pretty liminal in terms of time zones at this point anyway) I paused Beasts of the Southern Wild, looked up from my beekeeping book, and put down the blueberry muffin a super-polite German flight attendant had just brought me and stared. Something remarkable was happening. The horizon had taken a peachy luminosity, a color beyond my wildest dreams. I saw right where the sky becomes not sky what looked to me like the forest fires that I occasionally see in the dry distance back home in Utah. The horizon remained seemingly aflame for what felt like a long time.

I have never seen a sunrise like this. My mouth was agape. I could hear a flight attendant approaching and knew soon I would have to ask for orange juice, please. I was nervous at the prospect of tearing myself away from the window, worried that I would be rude in my distraction. She was two rows away when the dawn broke– finally I understand that phrase– and I saw a blinding orange sliver emerge over the horizon. This is the moment when looking gets tricky. Like a loud concert, the sunrise became harmful to the same sense it was pleasing to. I fixed my gaze on a nearby cloud, hoping my periphery would satisfy. That blinding sliver became a blinding slice, a blinding semicircle. Soon, too soon, it became circular, still blinding but now white against blue instead of orange in a gradient of peaches and pinks. I could feel the sun then as well as seeing it, and I watched its light illuminate the pink ear and white hair of the stranger sitting next to me. I wondered if the bright light was bothering him, but I had no plans to close the blind until he asked me to.