First Sunrise 2017

This is the third in my series of posts on the first sunrise of the year, or Hatsuhi no De in Japanese (初日の出).  Once again, I set off on a very easy quest to see the very first sunlight of the new year.

Just like my last post on this topic, I was awoken just by dulcet tones of the "Marimba" tone on my iPhone, in the morning twilight.  The same phone as last time, I was recently informed that it is now the oldest cell phone on my company's plan.  It's been quite a while since my last hatsuhi outing.  But it still feels very mottainai to replace a phone that does everything I need, so I'm carrying it into the new year.

Today, my dog Shasta decided to join me in heading out into the morning twilight.  The weather was calm and the mid-40s -- not so hot, but not so cold as last year where the near-freezing winds kept me swaddled in my bed.

Being a meteorologist and a very amateur astronomer, naturally the first thing I did as I got outside was to look up.  I was a met with a blank sheet of grayish blues, blending off into a greenish hue in the far east.

The only thing in the sky was Jupiter, high to the south, its great light piercing the twilight.  It's the kind of sight that most people will easily miss, but if you know to look along the ecliptic plane, it's obvious.  And Jupiter was quite the welcome sight, as I hadn't seen the shepherd planet for months now.

Lately, the dominance of Venus as the evening star has been unnerving me just a little, playing along with the half moon that graced our skies on Election Day.  A moon cut in twain, one-half light and one-half dark.  I tell myself that these lights in the sky don't have real meaning, but they still have the meaning our subconscious gives them anyway.

But my attention was drawn earthward by the sharp click of a green-breasted hummingbird perched on our abutilon.  He's half asleep still, but he keeps tweeting me his warning: "Hey, this is my nectar tree buddy, so watch your step."

Shasta has since finished the first round of the yard, and came back to ask me what we're going to do today.  Perhaps I was inspired by the Thin Man movie I watched last night, or just the fact that a wire fox terrier is game for anything.  "C'mere Shasta, let's go up on the roof."

I hoisted Shasta up onto the roof, shingles still damp from yesterday's rain, and then hoisted myself.  Shasta took a quick appraisal of everything that was around, smelling every object he could find from the fireplace to the satellite dish.

Is this a sewer vent?  Oh wow, this is super interesting.

Well, sometimes a wire fox terrier can be a little too game.  Or gamey.  So I called him up to the top, and held him on my lap as we waited for the sunrise on the roof's apex.

The sky brightened enough to hide Jupiter, but we since had picked up a few travelers: loud and annoying seagulls, announcing the day's business as they flew inland on their routes.  And a jet high above us cast just a glimmer of a reflection of the sun's rays, but with nary a wisp of cloud behind it.

A look across the treetops to the south revealed a lovely green land, even more verdant than looking at it from below.  Maybe too green for this particular land, but we built it, we earned it, and with any luck the rain will keep coming to sustain us.

On reflection of what we had made of our land here, something just switched inside me.  A moment of deep grief for all of the things we've lost last year.  For the wounds we've taken.  A worry that this, all of this, could fall to ruin.  Not a sense of mono no aware, but something deeper and crueler.  In order to create, one must destroy, but destruction without creation is another thing entirely.

Off to the north, Ventura's iconic Two Trees are fast becoming One Trees as the eastern eucalyptus of the pair slowly succumbs to damage from the long drought.  Below it and much nearer to me sits a giant parking structure, nearly equal in size to the new hospital I mentioned before.  The problem with Southern California architecture, as they've said in the LA Times, is that the car always wins.  It loomed over that horizon, mostly featureless, mostly concrete, a gray reminder of the view of the hills we've mostly given up.

I gave Shasta a hug, and told him that everything is going to be OK, and that we were here to see a sunrise.  But he's a dog, and I think we know who I was really trying to convince.

By this time, the sky had grown to a light blue, with pinkish high clouds in the far distance.  The wind was calm at first, but it steadily grew in force in the ten minutes before sunrise.  A final gust of wind heralded the arrival of the sun, as the very first rays broke across the hills.

About two minutes later, my own first ray of sunlight flashes into my eyes, filtered through the wide branches of a distant star pine.  I point it out to Shasta, but he's still not really getting why he's up here on the roof sitting on his human's lap.  But hey, it's different and something to do.

The sun's disc quickly resolved into its proper shape, and we stood up, taking in the new year.  I felt a sense of relief, that I had really and finally escaped the last year.

But then I really looked around.  The world I had seen filled with soft shades and hazy colors was no more.  It had suddenly sharpened into a world filled with strong lines of light and shadow.  So much more light, but so many more shadows crisply defined by the hilltops, palm trees, and walls.  Daybreak is the moment when everything just changes.

I like to think of our lives here on Earth as something like a sunset.  That is to say, we live such a short time, surrounded by incredible beauty and rapid change, before we head into the unknown night.

But sunrise too has power.  And maybe it describes us just as well.  Perhaps we humans are still at the beginning of all things.  And at a time like now, we can see the shadow and the light clearly for the first time in a long time.

Everything looks a little different now than it did last year.  The light and shadow are so clearly defined.  But there are so many colors now too, and those colors will shine.  Now that we can see all the shadows, we can awaken into the light.

Well, eventually.  I was still pretty sleepy, so it was time for me and Shasta to head back to bed for a bit.  The day was ready for us, but we were still not quite ready for the day.

First Sunrise 2014

This is the second entry in my series on watching the first sunrise of the year, which is known as Hatsuhi no De (初日の出, "first day's rising"), or simply hatsuhi.  Last year, I tried out the ritual just as kind of a curiosity, but I thought it might be interesting to repeat this year as well.  And I think I just may have learned something new.

Being a habitual night owl, I woke up this morning to the sound of the alarm on my new iPhone.  Last year, I used an old, original model iPhone, but my new job bought me a shiny new gold smartphone as part of the hiring package.  This might seem like bragging, but it's actually an important part of the story.

I pulled on some warm clothes, I had set aside last night, went outside, and scrambled once again up the ladder unto the roof.  Unlike last year, this New Year's was a beautiful day, with a clear blue sky and nothing but the faintest wisps of cirriform clouds draped over the horizon.  The weak Santa Ana winds of the past week had done their job, making me feel quite comfortable, even on the cold black roof.

I looked to the south first, and paused to recognize that the giant ficus tree I mentioned last year is truly gone.  A bowl of green tilted towards the afternoon sun, it had stood nearly six stories tall.  The Friday before Christmas, a crew came and trimmed the tree down to a mere Mohawk-cut of leaves; they returned the following Monday to finish the job, working into the evening to remove even the stump.  All that effort from sixty years of growth, gone in mere days, shredded into tiny chunks.

And in the place of the giant tree, there was a void.  It revealed small houses, small cars, and the tiniest bit more ocean view -- but mostly, empty sky.  The crows that had been my companions the first time remained distant, their home destroyed by the saw.  My closest companion this year was a lone pigeon, but he seemed interested in neither me nor the sunrise, and soon flapped away.

The world, however, was still coming alive.  I could hear plenty of crows' calls and finches' tweets all around.  And the first few people started walking past, into the calm morning dawn.  However, it was still quiet at my neighbor's, where the remains of last night's party littered the concrete-capped courtyard.

Another neighbor had a mural painted on his backyard fence, and from this angle I could see the edge of the blue sky and verdant hills in the image.  This couldn't be a bigger contrast to the actual hills to the north, which remain a stubborn, unseasonable brown, the result of three years of drought.

Part of the hills were masked by brand-new, six-story structure of steel beams, with white work lights glowing dimly on four of the floors.  The uppermost beam bears an American flag and a rather beaten-up Christmas tree, while another beam proudly proclaims in spray-painted letters, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY OWEN".

The building is still new enough that I can see through to the brown hillside behind, but I know that this can't last.  Last year, the space was nothing but empty air; this year it is a bustling construction zone.  Next year, it will be a new wing of a hospital.  And every day will bring new stories to the building, of illnesses treated, lives saved, and lives lost.  What was empty space will become a place where people get a new start on life, or will have to grieve for their loved ones.

It is not that place yet.  But as I took my first look around in the morning twilight, I couldn't help but be struck by how different things looked.  Here I was, standing on the same roof in the same place, exactly one year ago, but the world around had changed.  And in my own pocket was an iPhone, a token showing how much I had changed too.  Brent the NEET had been transformed into Brent the Salaryman.  And just like that hospital, I would continue to change.

Even nature itself never stops changing -- the hills behind the hospital began to pick up patches of light and shadow.  The sun was coming up, for real this time.

Out of the northwest, a jet passed directly over my head (though I didn't notice the extra weight on my head).  And in its wake, it left a lone contrail, a single straight line clear across the entire sky.  And as the plane flew into the southwest, the Sun just began to peek over the mountains, with the first direct rays filtering through a star pine.

And as the Sun rose to assume its full sphere, I let out a little cry of joy.  I had seen the first sunrise this time!  I had made it to this point in time and space once again, and there's something beautiful about that.

I lingered a little longer, looking at the world bisected by the contrail.  The lost giant tree and long shadows lingered to the southwest; the new hospital, drought-parched hills, and the rising sun lied in the northeast hemisphere.  And here I was in the middle of it, my world divided in twain at the new year.

It was clear I had only one way to go.  And that was back towards the "past", because I sure as hell wasn't going to get off the roof without a ladder.

Just as before, I crawled back into bed, and began to ponder what I had seen.  Now, I finally get the point of staying up this early to see the first morning sun. I saw a reflection of Japanese concept of mono no aware (物の哀れ), the awareness of the impermanence of things.  Sometimes, it's important to reflect on past and how things are always changing, and this ritual is but one way.

Some changes are good, some are bad, but we must go on.  The tree is lost, but the crows of last year, Phobos and Deimos, have hopefully found a new home.  I've lost much of my free time, but found an excellent job.  And somewhere out there, eventually, Baby Owen is going to have the time of his life.