It’s a random day around the middle of September. I think it's a Sunday. What a great day to be alive no matter what day it is. It's a rather beautiful morning beginning with the first ray of sunshine.
The sun came up at 6:41 here in the High Sierras. It came up a minute or two later than it did yesterday. And it'll rise a bit later every day until daylight savings time graces us with its absolutely pointless presence.
The sun is already wide awake though, unlike me. I'm just waking up from a slumber in my hammock. But the sun has already taken an ice cold shower doused in moonlight. It has brushed its sunbeams. Made itself a big ole bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios the size of Jupiter, and stopped by the Starbucks on the corner of Mars and 111th Street for an iced coffee with vanilla almond milk before it makes the cosmic climb over Lake Tahoe, or wherever it is in the world, you, the reader, fancy to watch it rise.
I roost myself from the hammock, and am making some coffee with a lemonade donut on the side with the sunrise this morning. I sprawl out on the hood of my car, chewing on sweet fried tangy doughy things because I could barely sleep as it was absolutely freezing cold.
The great big ball of blistering light makes Tahoe look like a spiral tide pool of infinite sapphires. I have to squint my eyes just to watch all the little glints of sparkling light dance across the water with such crystal blue persuasion.
Not enough people talk out loud about the sun, though they really ought to. Because the sun, if it really wanted, could microwave this place y'all call earth until everyone of us spontaneously popped open like a freshly squeezed bag of burnt microwave popcorn.
And I’m not one to get all scientific on you, but those in the science sector say that the sun is getting bigger every damn day. And one day, it’s big beautiful brightness will chow down on this place, as though it were me about to engulf another lemonade donut because the succulent little things are so damn tasty.
And when this cosmically colossal event happens, absolutely everything will be turned to ashes and dust, even lemonade donuts. There will be no more High Sierras, no more bags of burnt microwave popcorn, no more New York City, no more wilderness for me to find my way through to write in. No more Lake Tahoe, no more pencils, no more smartphones, no more blue skies, no more Simpsons, Seinfeld, or It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia reruns.
It will be lights out for every last one of us.
Actually, I guess in all divine reality, it will be like a spotlight is shining on us all to the fullest extent.
And to add another thing one must remember. We are pretty damn minuscule in the grandiose scheme of things when in comparison with the sun. The big ole bright yella thing contains 99.88 percent of all the mass found in our solar system. So, if we let our imagination run wild, like we must always do, and imagine that the everything in the solar system was created into something much smaller. Imagine the earth was about the size of a baseball. That would make the sun similar to the size of that new sphere thing you've all seen a thousand photos of in Las Vegas just a few three hundred miles and some change from where I sit.
The sun also has the uncanny cosmic ability to harness every last bit of gravity that grabs ahold of us. Which means every single thing in this godblessed solar system hovers around it—like a bunch of famished ornery old folks after church at a Sunday afternoon potluck.
In fact, if it weren’t for the gravity of the sun's situation, this earth would be slung like a pebble from my son's slingshot in a straightforward motion through the vastness of empty space. We would all float away into a void of eternal nothingness, and be forever down depressed while floating without purpose through the infinite darkness.
We'd all be pale and pasty, cold as hell, and become a civilization who listens almost exclusively to way too many sad country songs written by that guy that used to sing sad rock songs from Hootie & The Blowfish.
But besides that guy, and all sad country songs aside, the biology of the human anatomy is delicately arranged around the sun. Every part of us needs the sun on a daily basis, our eyes, our mind, our skin, our mood, our heart, and most definitely our soul.
In short, to need the sun, is to be beautifully human. Or if I may put it down on paper more plain and simply, humanity really needs a healthy dose of vitamin D on a daily basis.
Our greatest-great-great ancestors even built the communities we now call home around the sun. Since there were no smartphones around to distract them, they woke up with the circadian rhythm of a sunrise. They got all of their hard work done by the laying the foundation of liberty for us. And then they'd fall fast sleep with the rhythm of the sun as it set for the evening.
It also happened to be that in ancient times some clever creative asshole who probably seemed crazy as all hell to everyone figured out that it takes three hundred and sixty five days for the earth to make a full circle around the sun. So, he created something that would come to be known as a yearly calendar with twelve months of astrological signs divvied up between four different seasons.
Then he drew up millions of them, put magnets on their backsides and various bullshit consumerist regional & political party advertisements on the front, and gave them away at every middle-aged insurance and Freedom Cake convention underneath the aforementioned sun, and Las Vegas.
Even the seven days a week we live and die by are based on the pattern of the sun—the most relaxing word of the week, “Sunday” comes directly to my creative mind.
Also, every day, hour, minute, second, nanosecond, and even the blink of an eye are also based off of a sundial. Which means, in a manner of speaking, that the most pressing of things in this life that we call "time" is measured specifically by the sun.
If you wish to get a little bit more poetic about things: the sun could be held somewhat accountable for every ounce of earthly ambition, for every bloom of a flower, for every spark of creativity, for every burst of color, for every delicate rebirth, and maybe even for falling in love.
Yes indeed, we cannot fully live a pure and healthy life without any of those things.
Without the sun, even things like the metaphysical photosynthesis of our soul would be impossible. And photosynthetic things are what every living being needs to grow and eat. So, no sun, no more garden salads, farmers markets, heirloom tomatoes, or Sunday afternoon potlucks.
But more creatively important than anything, metaphysical photosynthesis are the two biggest two words I’ve used in this post. They're a whole ten syllables to be exact.
But let’s get back to being poetic.
The sun is everything to me though. It gives light to everything I see. It is responsible for what I taste, touch, it gives strength to my vision. It feeds my soul, it bathes me in its warmth. It makes my wintry pasty ass tan in the spring, It helps nourish the landscape of a better life and allows my mentality the opportunity to become more fertile and that much more alive via the act of those two words again, metaphysical photosynthesis, which is much needed for a healthy and blossoming soul.
It's also responsible for the wild nature of things that are beginning to wake up around me as we speak.
All of the chirping bluebirds, the rambunctious rooster next door, and the buzzing honeybees, announce its arrival in their own little way every morning. And it shows up mostly on time every day, albeit a few minutes late, and it makes Tahoe, and everything else in between look way more beautiful and magical than it already is.
Yes, sunshine is always kind and easy on the eyes this early in the morning.
Even though we humans can’t fully understand the big ball of blistering light out yonder in the great beyond, it doesn’t make it any less generous to us. It is the humble center of the galaxy we call home, that being the Milky Way. It is a compass to the sunburnt and weary traveler at sea. It is a dear friend to the word farmer lost in the middle of a page out near nowhere northern Nevada.
It is so beautifully bright, not a single one of us can look at it too damn long without going momentarily blind. It is so majestic and powerful that it will scorch anything that gets within a few thousand miles of it’s personal space.
And it makes sense if you take a minute to really think about it, that God, him, her, or itself, just might hide behind said sun. Because most all of us, being unable to stare at the light for too long, will eventually give up looking altogether in fear of going completely blind. That's why a damn good pair of polarized sunglasses are so very important these days.
But one day down the road, hopefully not anytime too soon though and as I said at the beginning of these words. Scientists say that the big ole bright yella thing will swallow all of us and this earth we call home whole. Pure infinite light will scorch this whole wide world into a something similar to an early morning smoldering bonfire from the rowdy night before.
On that day, all of our pain and suffering, all of our sorrow, all of the injustice, the hatred, the anger, the bitterness, the intolerance, the disappointment and disharmony between us will go up in flames, or even just spontaneously combust.
There will be no more calendars to fill up pointless appointments with, no more words to write, no more poems filled with love, no more internet arguments to get into over petty shit, no more lemonade donuts to chow down on, no more comparisons of baseballs to newly built spheres, and no more smartphones or televisions to distract us from what we should be doing, which is creating.
Time itself will cease to exist.
Only sunshine will.
Forever and ever and evermore.
Anyways, I have to get going for now. But I thought about you and the light you bring to the people you touch in your life this morning.
Because your smile is the closest thing I've ever seen that reminds me of sunshine.
And I hope you have a lovely day just smiling away, and please dragon bait, don't forget to wear your damn sunscreen.
Cordially,
That Ryan Love guy
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