The Beautiful Hour

I lived through Blue Monday. I don't think that today has been categorized or colourized or pre-ordained to hold anything in particular. It's just a day. My day starts barnyard early with dogs yipping for breakfast at 5:30 am. At the core of the life of every commuter are the concepts of sleep and light. It's not so much the length of the train ride into work each day and back again that starts to gnaw at your sanity. It's sleep and light. The sleep issue is non-negotiable: bed by 10:00 pm or I am screwed. Yes, sleep is a necessity but light is something much more. For those who leave home in the cat hours of fumbling darkness and return as the last sliver of day is on it's way out, the degree of daylight that you are afforded is a measure of hope. It's a wonderful gift.
I've started to notice a ray of grey, on the homeward journey and it makes me very happy. As I am taking the train home, half restless with the desire to get to my husband and my animals and my house and my "life" and half snoozing with a constant physical need for just a little bit more sleep, I know that soon, in the next few weeks there will indeed be light. And it's not just the symbolic meaning or psychological effects of the light. There is a time, minutes stretching out and ushering in the end of day, when pink and pearl and blue and gold seem to join together if only for a very little while. I always think of it as the beautiful hour. I have moved alot in my life and lived in some plain jane ugly towns: Sudbury, Tacoma, Toronto...I don't think anyone has ever written a poem or won a photography contest while trying to capture the sun setting over Sudbury. Still, it doesn't seem to matter where you are in the world, there is a luxuriantly brief time of certain evenings when everything is beautiful. Maybe it's some chemical effect, ozone layers shifting, I would rather think about how it reminds me of summer and throwing my bike on the front lawn in happy exhaustion and being told that it's time to come in and go to bed.