Chasing the Light

The sun rises in spite of everything

Over the last few months, scaffolding was up against our building while roofers carried out repairs. My room is the bigger one but has a smaller window, and the scaffolding blocked sunlight from streaming in. It was late winter, and the light was low already. I didn’t think it made much of a difference. Last week, the scaffolding came down in the early morning. I opened my blinds and was greeted by a new radiance. A room without shadow — how new, how wonderful.

In my last flat, my bedroom window was south-facing. It overlooked only a short brick wall and a small gravel path, which foxes and stray cats would take to visit me in the early mornings. No one could see me, so I never closed the blinds. In the mornings I was drenched by sunbeams. London is cloudy in the winters, that bit is right, but on the overcast days, it seemed the sun came out early — perhaps only to greet the world — and then hid again. Even when I wanted to sleep in, the glow bled through my eyelids, and I was up at 7. Sometimes I got up. Other times I read, or scrolled, and waited for the clouds to fall back over the sun so I could sleep again. I guess I didn’t want to miss anything.

Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver:

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
 
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
 
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Now, my room has north-facing windows. I am learning how to find the light again, in more ways than one. This spring has been especially dreary, and the few days of spontaneous warmth earlier this month were short-lived. The wind blows the clouds quickly, so you can step out in the sunshine and return soaked. It’s always unpredictable, and it’s been difficult not to adopt a hopeless perspective. I read “Why I Wake Early” in envy, in bed in a dark room, sick of rain. I take my prescribed weekly dose of Vitamin D, ground-up gossamer rays wrapped in plastic. It’s already summer at home in Virginia, and the trees are deep green. I long for the sun to hold me, to catch the flicker of light between the leaves along tree-lined roads as I drive. In the meantime, it feels like London is driving me towards sadness. But if I catch a swift moment of sunshine, I do my best to chase it. Recently, I’ve been sticking my head out of the angled window in our kitchen and watching the trains go by. I count the flowerbeds in my neighbor’s garden as I soak up a bit of the sun. If I’m working or staying home all day, I imagine holding out a jar to collect the beams. I’ll keep it by my desk, or sprinkle some into my tea, and hope that it lasts until bedtime.

“I knew something was wrong” by Dorothea Grossman:

I knew something was wrong
the day I tried to pick up a
small piece of sunlight
and it slithered through my fingers,
not wanting to take shape.
Everything else stayed the same—
the chairs and the carpet
and all the corners
where the waiting continued.

I’ve always been a sun-chaser. Growing up, I would strain my eyes trying to read in the back of the car at dusk. My mom came in when she got home from work in the late afternoon and immediately turned the light on, thinking it was dark enough already. When she left, I’d close the door and turn it off again, trying to drink up the last of the day’s light filtering through my blinds. Even now, I get unnecessarily annoyed when my flatmate turns on the big light before sunset. I want to believe the light will stay forever. I refuse to acknowledge its absence. Do not go gentle into that good night, writes Dylan Thomas. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

But what good is rage, if the darkness is inevitable? I have always struggled to accept it. On my bad days, I try to sleep through my sadness or my grief, in the hopes that life will settle back into place on its own, and that the sun will sneak through my closed blinds and pull me out of bed when it’s time. The downside to this is that the later I sleep in, the faster I lose the light that does exist. I know I love the morning light, and that the joy it offers before its dimming is always worth the work it takes to catch it. I am just never patient enough. I want it to end now. Victoria Chang writes in “Wanting to See”: The peaches blooming / in the dark are saved for the / ground. I confess, I want them. Did you know there is light at the bottom of the world? If one could swim deep enough, past the pressure and the perpetual darkness, they’d eventually reach organisms who were so deprived of light that they created it themselves. The light would never reach us, though, unless we found a way to reach it ourselves.

Morning Light by Edward Hopper

It’s a human craving, to want more light. One flame illumines a cave. A small flashlight under the covers. A signal of life, of fire, somewhere. The releasing of lanterns into the sky, the carrying of a wish. Candles when the power goes out. Cool light from the fridge. The stars of suburbia watching over me as I take out the trash. Moon-shaped nightlights, doors cracked open, glow-in-the-dark planets on the ceiling. How my dad keeps the light on for me when I’m coming home late. More light, more light. As were Goethe’s last words: More light, more light! Open the window so that more light may come in.

“Yellow” by Anne Sexton:

When they turn the sun
on again I’ll plant children
under it, I’ll light up my soul
with a match and let it sing. I’ll
take my bones and polish them, I’ll
vacuum up my stale hair, I’ll
pay all my neighbors’ bad debts, I’ll
write a poem called Yellow and put
my lips down to drink it up, I’ll
feed myself spoonfuls of heat and
everyone will be home playing with
their wings and the planet will
shudder with all those smiles and
there will be no poison anywhere, no plague
in the sky and there will be a mother-broth
for all of the people and we will
never die, not one of us, we’ll go on
won’t we?

When I was quarantining in America in 2020 and 2021, I woke up at 3:30 AM to attend my online classes. My latest one was at 7, so I would only get a sliver of sunlight before I fell back asleep. In the early afternoons of my class days, I worked at my local coffee shop and got home right around sunset. I was trained as an opener, so I usually got there at 5:15. I always envied the early risers who read newspapers by the window at sunrise. I often volunteered to take out the trash, or the pastry boxes in the mornings, and stood by the big dumpsters to stare at the sky for as long as I could. Once I pulled an all-nighter to write an essay. I worked from dawn until noon. Knowing I would get into bed as soon as I got home, I stood by my car in the lunchtime light until the heat got under my skin. I carried it until it faded.

Those were dark days. By the end of the school year, I felt my body deteriorating. I cut my hours and spent the summer searching for light, and found it in so many corners. Watching the sunrise at the beach, reading poetry, starting this newsletter, conversations with my best friend in her basement. These sparks illumined my life. When in the darkness again, I ask: what holds the light? If I let my eyes adjust, the answers glow. My friends. Reading in cafes. Long walks in the sunlight. Flowers. Candles. Warm socks. Making a nice dinner. Waking up early and carrying my body towards warmth, through — not past — the darkness and out the other side.

I burnt a candle as I wrote this, which I lit just before the sun began to set. In the daylight, you can’t find the flame, if not for the crackling of the wick. But as my room got darker, and I continued working, its glow swept across the room. It danced against the walls and the ceiling, almost in celebration of its dominance. Despite our hesitation before the darkness, it allows us to leave room for the miraculous, and a greater echo of light. It’s the hope for it that will carry us through.

“Everything is Going to Be Alright” by Derek Mahon:

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

I am starting to contemplate light as an exchange. Despite the isolation of the darkness, the sun is always somewhere, emitting light onto someone else. The world is never entirely dark. When I wake up early, I think of my parents, my sisters, and my best friend, still sleeping under the moon, half a world away. Soon, it will be their turn. Perhaps sunlight is something that is offered and not produced. A sky with open arms. I hope, with time, I can embrace it.

---

Life is beautiful. People are in love, it’s summer somewhere, and babies are being born and held every minute. As easy as that is to say, sometimes it’s difficult to believe. We all live in darkness at one time or another, some more than others. It’s a part of life, anyhow, and Devotions is dedicated to the whole of it. Bertolt Brecht wrote: In the dark times / will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing. / About the dark times.

If this finds you in darkness, I hope you’ll let me sit with you for a moment.

Sending love and light, in every form.

<3

Tara

(P.S.: Here’s an updated Devotions playlist. As a treat!)