Light

There have been strange phenomena afoot the last few weeks. I have been returning home from work in pitch-black night for what seems like years. Now, the office is clearing out in relatively broad daylight, and I find myself walking along the Capitol Hill paths, lined with early pansies and tulip shoots and the spring-smelling mulch, while the sun is still wholly in the sky. It’s as though an extra hour has been added to my day. I feel less tired, more aware. Colors seem more vibrant, feelings more acute.

Riding on the bus tonight, long shadows filtered in through the window. It was so bright still that I kept my sunglasses on as I typed an email to an old coworker now campaigning in Georgia. (Both emails significantly truncated as to not bore you.)

How is the new job? Can you come down on the 20^th for an event?

The job is great – being an LA for a freshman is a wonderfully terrifying thrill. Give me details about the 20^th, e.g., will campaign pay? Tell Thomas hi for me.

I look up as the bus veers off the express lane. As we ascend the ramp to Seminary Road, I note the trees surrounding the freeway. So many trees. Every hundred feet or so, there is a cherry or some other white flowering tree in full bloom amid the sprawling skeletons of their deciduous cousins. Like giant cotton balls, they seem misplaced, packed between still dormant trees that yet anticipate spring.

But then, I lift my sunglasses and see something quite beautiful indeed. The late afternoon light is reaching the top branches of all the trees and setting them ablaze. Though foliage in a proper sense is not visible, the sun is revealing in part what will be. Trunks and branches that seemed the same gray-brown-ash color (the color most trees are between November and March) are, in the light, an array of spring hues: pink, light green, white. It’s almost a surrealist watercolor, or perhaps a landscape drawn by a child. For who in this workaday world would think that a tree without leaves could be colorful?

I note how easy it is to trace the light’s reach. Where there is light, there is color, life; in the little crannies and valleys, and under the overpasses, plants still appear to be in the middle of winter.

What a difference light makes, I think, marveling at the difference between the two; but then, I remember that it is the sun that provides the nutrition and growth to coax leaves and flowers out of apparent death. Yes, even the trees hidden from the evening light have their splendor. I just have to wait for the morning light to see it.