Staring at the Sun

The sun rose slowly that day, as though someone was deliberately slowing it down (I was making human assumptions about nonhuman things); I looked directly at it as it moved and my eyes did not react at all, it was as though they had become used to these things that were bad for them - perhaps damaged, somehow, and irreparably. But I could see, and I could see clearly, and everything was lit up and everything was beautiful.

I remembered the time in school when I got detention for encouraging my friends to look right into the sun. I was in awe of the fact that the total eclipse was happening on a cloudless day; I felt this was an invitation of sorts. I thought that anything as natural and far away as the sun couldn't be as harmful as they said.

I was young.

But I seem to have made a habit of staring into the sun.

Eventually small clouds appeared and I thought my teacher, if he was there, would be relieved by their appearance, as if their presence could save me from myself. He would call them the "guardians of our eyes" and look at me like I should be thanking them. I would think him silly and I would think thoughts like: the clouds do not always shield the sun and even if they do, there will always be more sunny days.

The clouds dissipated as quickly as they appeared and I forgot my imagined conversations with the people who wish for more of them in the skies. I opened my curtains wide, filled my room with light.

If I were blind, perhaps everything would be blinding light. An abundance rather than an absence. That's what Nirvana is like, I was once told, the beautiful forever. Perhaps that's where I'm trying to get to. Perhaps I am trying to extinguish the absence of light.

There will always be more sunny days.