On The Changing Faces of the Morning Sky

It is 7:52am. I am tucked into my morning sofa, where I read and write. Second coffee. Brain and soul uncluttered.

I looked up. An idyllic landscape, ascending towards the sky with definite but imperceptible stepped tiers. It is full of hills, homes, and greenery to fill in anywhere that was missing some life or some natural reprieve from the human.

It had become day, all of a sudden. I first snuggled into my double blanket position some time around 6:30am. Then it was necessary for me to switch on the table lamp, more decorative than functional but the best I had. We have been meaning to have recessed lighting installed for years but it now feels like a feature of our to do list than of our home.

The sky looked nothing like it did just twenty minutes ago. It had shed the uneven but unmistakably dark clouds. The misty fog that hung over the clouds that hung over the more pure sky behind it. It was bright. It was green. Beautiful.

All of a sudden, it was now the day. Once 8am struck, it felt like the coziness of the morning dark would be a chapter that had been written and hidden behind new pages, only to echo the next morning, and never exactly be seen again.

It was as if the sky was changing faces every so often. Just moments ago, it looked ominous and stormy, the sort of blue you get when you accidentally drop matte black into the palette where the blue sat alone, and the two bond. Moments before that it was the sort of grey you get when the day’s fortune hasn’t yet been revealed, on the fence between a sustained grey or giving way to the sun and cloudless sky, as it had now done this October day in the Bay. Before all of that, it was so dark that it seemed like I was ready for the morning while the sky was still set to the night. Even as the daylight has set in, not to go back, it is betrayed by droplets of morning mist still hanging on my window.

The morning sky is like no other. It evolves very quickly. It is unlike the day, where the sky can stay the same for hours until dusk begins to set in, and after a rapid evolution, the dark night sky reigns for hours more, until dawn knocks.

From dusk to dawn, there is stability. From the morning daylight to the sun set, there is stability. But the changing faces in the morning are something truly special. In a sense, it resembles the human spirit of the morning: rising, uncertain, shedding certain fatigue or yesterday’s memories, becoming one’s self for the day ahead. Processing certain emotions, or certain rational thoughts, until settling yesterday’s debts and planning today’s conquest. As one does, the clouds, the fog, the mist, the uncertainty fade away, giving way to the daylight and the unmistakably bright day ahead. That does not happen every day, surely. Some days, the clouds remain, the morning never gives way to the day, but just is the day, and nothing really changes through the grey skies from one phase to the next. Indeed, this also mirrors humanity in its own ways: days where we fail to shake off yesterday, or fail to recognize today.

Deep within me I have always felt a kindredness with the sky. We have a sense that nature reflects humanity and shapes humanity. The sky reflects how we change moods, and how we move into new phases of days and life.