Rising with the sun

The sun rising at Spring Equinox

Once, the sun was the switch that turned everything on. The sun would rise and light would come upon us. It would find its way to wherever we were—sliding under makeshift doors, between gaps in unlined walls, filtering through thin curtains.

The sun cast itself over us, and drew itself away again. We would rouse and fall sleepy to the rhythm of the sun, to the chemicals in our brain rising and falling, switching us off and on. The sun was master.

As the earth rotates, the sun’s light travels the globe. Together they create a constant rolling dawn and, all along the way, birdsong precedes it. I hear the tui’s low song as I lie in bed. Evolved and perfected to travel through dense forest, it penetrates weatherboard and dry wall. Through glass and curtain I hear it. But most of the chorus is not heard from inside. Our weathertight, airtight, houses exclude so much, excluding us from so much.

When we captured light and began to carry it around, something was lost. We can ignore the arrival of the sun, and ignore the fact that the day is at its end. Now, we master the switch. We can put our foot in day’s door and hold it there all night if we want to.

We just entered daylight savings here in New Zealand and it’s now that I really remember that the time on my clock is just a number. Time is a grid we lay over the day and, of all the living things on earth, humans are the only ones who walk within its lines. 

The magpie that woke me at 4.45am yesterday doesn’t care that my clock now says 5.45am. It still sings 20 minutes earlier than the rest of the choir, still takes its cue from the subtly changing light, not the clock. The tuis and blackbirds, thrush, chaffinch, yellowheads, sparrows and other songbirds still sing in the same order, all determined by the size of their eye and how much light it takes in. 

I’m not always great at turning off my light at night (so many books, so little time!), but I love remembering that my body is designed to flow with the light. It helps me remember that I have a place in the rolling dawn, that I’m inside an endless chorus.