Angeleno Femme

This is what it felt like

We take dawn for granted. It happens and we sleep through it, it is the unnoticed commercial sandwiched between TV programming. The sun sets during our daily activities — as we eat dinner, as we drive, as we sit languidly on a couch — and we squint as the sun dips under the horizon. Another day, another night. The darkness swallows the world. Who cares, we think. Plans continue. But dawn is perplexing for those that don’t work the early shift, for those that aren’t leaving the graveyard shift. Our circadian rhythm favors sunset over sunrise. I sleep through the start of something new most days of the year. I wake up and the world is already bright, a transition carried out with a huge seam running across it, from night to day I start anew none the wiser.

But I was on the road this time. Five in the morning. The freeway and I, gracefully moving past each other. It’d started at four thirty, my problems dragging behind my car like tin cans behind newly weds. On the freeway I chased life eastbound, just me and a few other cars drifting along, no rush, no obstacles, just pavement, tires and a fading night.

I didn’t see the sun come up. I just saw the world come back to life. Five-in-the-morning resembles a picture caught in low saturation. The colors are muted, gray. Everything feels quiet. The streets are empty. Vivid colors are still asleep, tossing gently around on their objects, asking for another hour, rubbing their eyes. Dawn is so subtle that you don’t realize you are in the transition. You don’t think about the sunrise. You just realize you can see the world again. But the clarity is dull, hushed. Everything is done in a whisper or an echo. The engine in my car humming, I see the horizon, the mountains in the distance as the part where the peaks meet the sky becomes dipped in red, like a ruby grapefruit. It teases into orange, into pink, into blue so light that you can barely see it. And the world wakes up, even though I’m already awake.

I gripped the steering wheel and drove towards the glowing sky as material life blossomed around me, volume turned up, saturation toggle shoved to the right. In my room I flopped on my bed, levelors down, the gray light seeping through the blinds. I remember this visual being comforting. As a young girl, this moment was literally the light at the end of a tunnel filled with nightmares. I’d open my eyes terrified, but relieved to see that night was over. Now, in bed, I hugged my blankets and drifted off as another day crept into the world. No comfort here. I slept through the chirping birds, through the blue in the sky. I just slept.