Sunshine down south
January 5th, 2023
You can feel the sun like that only down south. Down south from here. And here is very relative to where everyone is. I feel like I am right in the middle of a circle that defines me as far as I can see. But being in the middle is really like being nowhere at all. Being from down south or up north has a meaning, being in the middle is as nondescript and unexciting as the place I call home now to define where I am from and where actually I am, so I don’t lose myself.
But lets go back to the sunlight down south.
You cannot go out in direct sunlight like that at all. To be able to function when sunshine like that encircles you need to have a shelter of something, anything, even if that something is so fragile as a veranda latticed with a motley of uneven wooden rails. It is even better if that veranda is fortified with plants and flowers, making an anchorage to the naturalness that is blooming just outside, unafraid of the relentless sunlight down south.
How many different shades of white are there in the sunlight of the strong sun down south? From the gentleness of pale unblemished snow-white through the chalky shadowy medium to dusky half-bleached ashen dirt — white is not uniform at all. In the diffusion of the prism through the veranda supports, sunlight creates so many hues in the most boringly neutral color of all becomes a sincere imitation of the rainbow. Cheap but not at all a pale imitation.
I miss the sunshine and sunlight brightening my apartment and my garden and my outside world and by extension my thoughts and moods. I know it is getting better, days are getting longer by minutes only, but that gives hope and perseverance. Still, I dream of the sunlight slowly and gently warming my face and relaxing my muscles and joints. I know it will happen soon, but my impatience grows proportionally to extended daylight. The wait will only make it so much sweeter when it will arrive as a normal part of the upcoming season.
