like any other

Image Credit: Ameed

The day was like any other…

The alley lighting provided just enough soft glow to see my feet through the morning fog.  Objects closer to the lamps sent shadows stretching away to be swallowed by the surrounding darkness along the edge of the brick wall and between the houses.  The air, heavy with droplets, slowed my movement senses until my steps came back to me in faint syncopated echoes.  The marine layer collected on the exposed skin of my face and arms and forced me to shiver in its icy cool grasp.

The horizon lighting forced the shadows back towards the lamps in a gradual battle of expansion and defense in which there could only be one victor.  The fog picked up the charge of the natural light and sent a thousand tiny rainbows shooting like fireworks across the alley.  I never learned whether it was celebrating the sun’s morning triumph or just reveling in the joy of a new day.  In truth, the cause of the beauty I witnessed never troubled my thoughts.

The sky lighting burned a fierce blue as the dew lifted and retreated back to the coast.  I was sad to see the shimmering fade away but was equally distracted by the brilliant hue stretching across the ceiling of the world.  The alley lights winked out, surrendering completely, one by one down the long row of homes and night officially gave way to day.  Clouds lazily floated by, their blemishing of the sky only served to enhance its beauty, and the sun broke free of the eastern edge of the world.  My spirit soured with it.

The day was like any other: beautiful, magical, triumphant.

the alarm

The day was dreary, gloomy and overcast,
The darkness pulled my thoughts to the past,
Where life’s joys and triumphs had happened all too fast,
And my memories were faded, because nothing ever lasts.

…..

The alarm clock droned in my ear.

Sometimes it was piercing, sometimes I couldn’t hear it at all, and sometimes I was in a dreamy state where I knew it was going off and I should turn it off but it was mellow, muted, and so I felt no great sense of urgency to deal with it.  It was one of those mornings.

Still it droned on.

I cracked open my eyes, a sliver, to see how much light was pouring through the gaps in the blinds and was pleasantly surprised that I could open them without daylight frying my retinas and the sharp pain that always accompanied that.  Sadly, that wasn’t really a good thing as it meant the morning was once again overcast.

I hadn’t seen the sun in several days and it was starting to effect me.  I didn’t have seasonal affective disorder, but I had found that the longer I went without seeing the sun the lousier I felt, the more despondent I became.  The harder it was to talk myself out of bed and head to the job I dreaded.

The alarm continued to beep away.  I was aware of it but still felt no urge to silence it.

I turned my head away from the blinds and opened my eyes fully to stare up at the ceiling.  I knew I needed to get up and get started with my day, it was going to be another busy one, but I didn’t yet have enough control over my body to make it do my bidding.  My mind knew what it should do, my body had the capacity to follow those instructions, but they weren’t yet communicating as they normally would.

The overhead ceiling fan stood motionless.  The May grey and June gloom hadn’t given way to the hot summer nights and the fan hadn’t yet been called into action.  The room around me lightened as the sun, though its influence was filtered by the clouds and marine layer, rose higher into the sky.  Time was ticking away faster than I was aware of.

The alarm droned on.

My thoughts, as my mind and body continued to wake up and try to interact properly, fled to the past, when I wouldn’t have had to worry about getting up at a certain time, when I didn’t have a job, and responsibilities, and the pressure of having people depend on me.  I often fantasized about the freedom of youth.  I glorified it.  I romanticized it.  I held it in high regard as the penultimate experience of my life: my days were filled with only the activities I wanted them to be filled with.

Games, shenanigans, adventures all ruled the day.  I had the time and energy to explore when and where I wanted.  I could sleep away the mornings and the afternoons if I felt like it.  I could stay awake long into the night and watch the movies I wasn’t supposed to… or, that I learned later, weren’t all that great anyway and shouldn’t have wasted my time with.  But, that was the point – I had the ability to waste time without repercussions.  Isn’t that one of the often neglected but finest definitions of freedom?

But those days were only the penultimate experience of life.  Fully awake, fully in control again, I smiled.  Sure, I had to get up and go to a job I didn’t enjoy.  Sure, I had responsibilities and pressure and stress and hours of my life I wasn’t the “owner” of anymore.  Sure, I rarely found time do to the things that used to define who I was.

Having those responsibilities, though, afforded me the opportunities to grow into the man I became, to marry the wonderful woman who agreed to share her life with me, to adopt the two cats who always make me smile, and to have the family I had always wanted and constantly brought me unparalleled joy.

I turned the alarm off and got out of bed.

The alarm meant that I had to return to being a responsible adult, but there was also a silver lining to it.  It meant that the sooner I could get my work for the day done, the sooner I could be home again and spend time with my loved ones.

…..

The day was overcast, gloomy and dreary,
But the darkness was there to help me see,
Life always happens exactly as it is meant to be,
And the joys of today shine through it all brilliantly.

………………………………………………………………………

Rara has prompted me again:

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

“Silver Lining” is a prospect of hope or comfort in a gloomy situation.  [1870-75; from the proverb “Every cloud has a silver lining”] *

* Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

“Red – a world about to dawn!”

This week’s writing challenge, a splash of color, asks us to consider the power of colors as emotional triggers.  As the challenge voices, there are certain colors that have stereotypical (cultural) responses – white: clean, blue: sad, red: angry, green: healthy – and there are certain colors that have would trigger more personal responses based on memories and experiences of each individual – the colors of leaves as the seasons change: reds, oranges and browns, the color of the ocean as it breaks on shore: a full gradient of blues topped with a foamy white, the storm clouds gathering on the horizon: blacks, purples, greys, and oranges if the sun happens to be setting behind the clouds.  These are all great examples of the power of color.  I could write blog posts about each of these, what they mean to me, and how the color influences my reactions and responses.

However, personally, the first colors I think of when I’m considering them as emotional triggers are Red and Black.  Specifically, I think of a song from the musical Les Miserables titled exactly that: Red and Black.  (For reference, you can check out the full song here: Les Miserables – Red and Black lyrics.)

My first introduction to Les Miserables came in the form of the 1998 film starring Liam Neeson as Valjean and Geoffrey Rush as Javert (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119683/).  I was so utterly captivated by the story in the film that I immediately went out and read the Victor Hugo classic.  I was hooked.  After finishing the novel I had the opportunity to see the musical performed several times, in several locations, with several different touring companies.  They have all been fantastic.  (Perhaps I’m just a sucker for the story no matter what form it is told in.)

This may be taking the challenge slightly out of context, as rather than “actual” colors I’m going to focus on colors as words, but there are several lines in the song “Red and Black” that help me relive the experiences of watching, reading, and listening to the story and relive the full ensemble of emotions that the story has brought out in me each and every time I’ve gotten to experience it:

The color of the world is changing day by day…

Red – the blood of angry men!  Black – the dark of ages past!

Red – a world about to dawn!  Black – the night that ends at last!

…..

Red…  I feel my soul on fire!  Black…  My world if she’s not there…

Red…  The color of desire!  Black…  The color of despair!

Red and Black, two colors, seemingly such simple descriptions (they aren’t even the most imaginative or expressive of colors) but in this song they exist on a palate all their own.  They encompass life and death, love and loss, past, present, and future.  They are everything we have ever been and everything we will ever be.

Red is passion, hope, love, the dawning of a new day, the dawning of a new life, a new relationship, and all the possibilities the future may have in store, as well as the drive to make that future a better world.

Black is loss, and loneliness, the necessary evils to bring about change, strife, anguish, the demons from our pasts, the things that haunt our memories, and, ultimately, death.

These simple words, these two simple colors, help me remember all of the corresponding interactions and emotions in the story.  From there, the colors help me transfer my thoughts from the story to experiences in my own life; Red and Black trigger a flood of memories: pain and sorrow, triumph and joy, and above all love – that ever constant and ever fluctuating drive in all of our lives. 

Ups and downs, back and forth, good and bad, red and black: love and life.  These two colors can represent the entire sum of our human experience.  At least, when I’m listening to that song, they can for me.