The Grain and the Noise: Preamble

Jeez, the sky was so clear today, the morning sun coming through the crystal atmosphere and the colors on the autumn trees was a sight. Very much a sight. As I walked Lucian to school I doubted I had ever seen the world in such crystal clarity. I mean, not all the psychedelics could make such colors and shapes and clearness as I saw this morning. Impressive.

This is, of course, not the way I generally see the world. I doubt I see the world different than most. What I generally see is not a crystal clear morning, but the eerie and comforting glow of street lights. I have, at least for most of the last 20 years, lived almost exclusively at night. Even since the birth of my son when I have been forced to get up in the morning, I did not venture out of the house as early as we do now that school is in session.

The true irony of it is that I have loathed the morning my whole life. I loathe it now. And yet, it is the time of the day when I prefer to write. I prefer to write in the morning because I do like the light that comes through the shaded windows. It's pallid, like overcast, peaceful. I prefer to write in morning because I traditionally have to go to work in the evenings. I prefer to write in the mornings because it's better than being out in the world, which come morning is awful.

Yet, this morning, it was so clear. Clear. Being here in Colorado, and especially in the rainshadow of the Front Range, there is no protection from the sun. We are at over 5,000 feet in elevation. We have no clouds, no trees, just that incessant fucking sun and white-white light most of the year. Even though this seems to have a set of circumstances that would lead to clear light like the light we had this morning, it is generally not the case.

Generally, there is a great deal of pollution here. It comes from still air, lack of texture in the air and all the cars driving in and around Denver. Now, on a windy, the air quality is better, but it is not clear. On a windy day the pollution goes to Kansas and the dust kicks up. It creates strange light. And even when this is not the case, like the stillness of summer, the sun is so direct and potent that is washes everything to white, the sun removes the colors and it removes the contrast and it removes depth.

Finally, offsetting the clarity of this morning, and my thoughts on my work habits and early parts of day, I came to a conclusion: I have lived most of my outside life at night, most of my internal writing life in the morning and I prefer the golden lights of street lights over a clear morning. If I could record life as a photograph I would not need stark clarity because I have never minded the grain and since the onset of digital photography, I have not minded the noise.