In the Mirror

Do you know how often I see a setting sun?  Or a rising one?  Rarely.  When I do catch a magical glimpse, it's usually mid-crosswalk as I look up beyond a smattering of yellow cabs and there he is.  I have to catch my breath taking in the deeply saturated hues of amber and violet, so graceful behind the cacophonous urban landscape of towers and skyscrapers.

So imagine how insanely my brain reacted when I sleepily looked out the boat window as we whisked southward along the East River.  The sun.  The sun!  The.  Sun.  THE SUN.  Note Julia's enthusiasm.

The bug-eye shades that had been hiding my face for the five hours prior, I gingerly lifted them away from my tired face for a little peek.  I knew there were only a few minutes before the sun would sink entirely and disappear for the night.  I fumbled around my travel bag for Pablo.  This shot, it looks just as I remember it.  Purples and pinks and blues all over.  Even the haze through the thick glass of the ferry window did little to blemish the image.

There was a time when I would have seen this and thought, meh.  Sun, seas, canyons, waterfalls, meadows, stars, forests, mountains - they didn't do it for me.  Until...I unexpectedly found myself on the edge of a quiet beach several years back, the first visit after a dizzying long spell of maritime distance, and looked out to the brilliant blue of the horizon {+}.  And that did it for me.

There was a period in my life when I didn't see myself.  I mean that quite literally.  I ignored both mirrors in my apartment. I caught glimpses every morning and night as I brushed my teeth in front of the medicine cabinet, but I think it's fair to say that I didn't actually see see see myself.  I lacked the emotional space for introspection or self-awareness, could not find the energy for self-improvement.  For years.  Those last two words are shocking because how is that possible?  Years of neglect?  How wasteful.  How pitiful.  

The practice of looking around, absorbing, and taking in, this is a skill I developed earlier than most.  Too early, I would say.  But actively processing these elements with the intention of informing, grooming, and growing my own character?  That's still very much a work in progress.  To help this along, I'm cleaning house.  I've started with Google Tasks.  Never has checking a box on a screen been so utterly satisfying.  It's better than stroking a line on paper with red ink!  I had more than four hundred subscriptions in my Google Reader (judge not, dear reader!).  Unacceptable.  I've trimmed down to a hundred sixty-nine, to a list of sites that deliver content of the inspiring, informative, thought-provoking, or even light-hearted sort; the single criterion being that the author delivers something -anything- that touches me, that speaks to me in some way.  Excess and I have a notoriously unhealthy relationship, so I'm working on getting that list to an even one hundred.

I want to see clearly, to think clearly, to process clearly.  Looking through a lens of clutter and distractions can wreck a person.  I want - no, I need - to learn how to see myself in a mirror, to see sharp and crisp reflections in all the things that mold my very being.

View from the East River.  NY.

8:12 pm.  Monday.  2012.  28 May.