The beauty and falseness of Sunrises

by  Royal Hopper

You are drive down a sparsely populated Sin City commuter roadway on your way home from your daily mortgage paying endeavor and notice the brilliant sunrise filtering over the mountainous horizon and through the buildings and houses of the city that is both the world’s realest and its phoniest city.

Daylight savings time has not lifted its anachronistic head and the sun is beginning to sink behind those self same mountains. It is beautiful. As it always is.

Something catches your eye as you pull to a stop at a traffic light. A homeless man looks up from his makeshift bedroom of soiled sleeping bags and linen and pillows likely stolen from a local hotel or from the trash, seems to moan squint at the unwelcome light streaming through his eyes and perhaps at the possibility of lower temperatures and rolls over covering himself with the filthy sleeping bag and attempting to get at least a little sleep before the winter chill sets in. The sun and the earth are empirical things whose existence cannot doubted by anyone except a few who overindulge in cannabis or the few who genuinely think burning man is a lame bourgeois tribute to sobriety. Sunrises and sunsets are a creation of humanity.
I have always had a certain mild obsession with sunrises and sunsets ..Perhaps it is a natural human reaction to growing up in small refinery towns that did not have much else to offer besides the occasional spots of natural beauty and incredible sunrises …Perhaps it is in reaction to the starkly beautiful sunrises and sunsets of my adopted desert city, the City of Sin. Perhaps but whatever the case sunrises and sunsets in their purest definition are not real.

The sun doesn’t set. The sun is the center of the solar system. The earth revolves around the sun and it rotates on its own axis. We cannot see it for 10 to 12 hours but it is always there because if it wasn’t the earth would freeze and die within minutes. The sun doesn’t set…The earth does…but the illusion is beautiful.

It is beautiful and as long as you understand that the value of beauty lies only in the moment and that for some people it is simply a fact they have to deal with then admiring that beauty is a good and hopeful thing, an unspoken promise of the new day and the possibility. 

Admiring sunrises and sets is both beauty and folly both admirable and in excess despicable.

It is admirable in that it means you can appreciate beauty that is right in front of you and it becomes despicable if you believe it excuses you from living in the real world and dealing with its problems..

Just remember that in the end it is not a real thing ..the beauty lies in your ability to admire it and move on. Show the beauty to your friends and children and then come down to earth and live within the real possibilities of this earth. Also take joy in the smile of your children and the home you provide for them and in the frowns they give when they don’t get their way and you know you have done the right thing. Live for this day and the next and don’t get so hung up on the beauty of sunrises and sunsets that you forget to live in this moment and in this day …
The Sun is the Sun and for better or worse will continue with or without your admiration
That’s life in the City of Sin
Love you Sinners take care