Went outside just minutes ago (to dump trash—how mundane). The air was crisp and cool and smelled sweet with the hint of damp earth and green things growing; the dawnlight on the horizon barely pinked. Roosters crowed, frogs cheeped, and one mockingbird sang with real vigor. In the cloudless sky, Venus and Mars (I think) sat low on my southeastern horizon. Breathing in was sheer pleasure.

Made moreso by the fact that I’m going to finish the book today.

Off to work, with my window open and the roosters still crowing my serenade.

The sunrise today was a touch blurred by mist in the air. This either wrecks the image, or gives it a dreamy, painterly quality, depending on your tastes.

In either case, it’s posted for your viewing pleasure, with a desktop wallpaper below the fold.

• 1024×768 wallpaper

• 1280×960
• 800×600

This morning I has a neat, creepy layer of fog suspended between the ground and the treeline, and I decided it would be worth a picture.

In taking the picture, I unravelled the Mystery of The Ghosts. This morning my back yard played host to Ghost Lollapalooza. And I think I know why.

This is the one that was hidden in a writing post. All the rest you can either find or click through to by clicking on either the Sunrises topic, at your left, or by clicking the pretty blue button in the top left corner of this or any sunrise-related post.

Every sunrise is a gift, every lovely sunrise doubly so. I spent seven-and-a-half years in a place where buildings and the design of our townhouse blocked out the sunrises. I was up early enough — I’m a morning person. Sunrises have always meant something special to me. In spite of which, I missed every one.

So that is why I share my sunrises now.

Today’s sky was subtle. I knew before the sun started coloring them that the clouds showed promise, and I watched with interest for the first tints of light that would tell whether or not this would be a sky worth keeping. It was.

Other pictures, plus wallpapers, below the fold.

To download your wallpaper, right-click or CMD-click on the link for the wallpaper you want and save to disk, or if you’re on a Mac, click through and drag the image to your desktop.

• Top picture, 800×600
• Top picture, 1024×768

[image2]

• Middle picture, 800×600
• Middle picture, 1024×768

[image3]

• Bottom picture, 800×600
• Bottom picture, 1024×768

Picasso and Franz Marc might seem to be odd folks to remember from public school kindergarten. But my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Quimby, had us doing crayon copies of their work, and discussing what we liked about it. She didn’t name the artists, or the paintings, but I still vividly recall my encounter with Big Blue Horses , the 1911 Franz Marc painting shown here.

I was a six-year-old horse nut. Had read every C. W. Anderson horse book at the library a dozen times; lay on my stomach in my bedroom copying his pictures over and over again trying to draw the way he drew; pinned a scarf to my butt and galloped around the house on all fours, setting up boots and shoes and toys as obstacle courses over which I could jump ….

Serious horse nut.

So in kindergarten, I copied that painting with my Big Fat Crayons, and I absolutely fell in love with it. It spoke to me. I can look at it now and see exactly what I saw then, as if I were still six years old. It breathes. It vibrates. It is full of life and movement and magic.

I was apparently doing a bit of vibrating, too, because Mrs. Quimby called on me to answer why I liked it so much.

“Because it looks so real,” I said, and just about got my ass laughed out of kindergarten. My know-it-all midget colleagues and associates pointed out in no uncertain terms that the horses were blue (you idiot), and weirdly fat, and lacking in that C.W. Anderson detail that kindergarten artists with erratic motor skills worshiped.

And I was six. I did not have the words to give my classmates a view into the soul I saw in that painting. In many ways, I still don’t. But I remembered the encounter, and the painting, and the magic — and this morning, talking with Matt before I got up to get to work, after we had just finished listening to Ray Bradbury on the radio talking to (the indescribable?) George Noory, I finally found out how that encounter had shaped me.

We were talking about why much of Bradbury’s work is still as fresh today as when he wrote it. About how it transcends genre and time, about how it is something that, like Twain, will still be readable in a hundred years. I said something about Bradbury’s work always being so real to me.

And, bam!, there it was. The connection. Bradbury’s work, like Marc’s, takes a step back from the minutiae of daily life, from the picky details of science and sociology. He blurs things just enough that we see past the story to what lies beyond. Just as Marc’s painting moves past the horse to give us the soul of the horse, Bradbury’s work moves past people to give us humanity. He writes real the way Marc painted real, doing work that leaves echoes in our minds and imprints on our souls long after we walk away.

I came back to the keyboard today a little more alive. Inspired. Excited. I remembered that when I was twenty-five, the reason that I wanted most to be a writer was because I could still be working at 85 — and there is Bradbury, who this morning said he’s working on two novels and a play, that he doesn’t know what people do with their time, but that he writes. That the secret of life is to always do something new.

Listening to him, I remembered C: The Secret Project, lying in wait on my hard drive. About why I want to write it so much. I thought about where writers get their ideas. I thought about snakes and sunrises. And, getting a little choked up, I remembered that, most of all, I have always wanted to write real.

More pictures, plus new sunrise wallpapers, below the cut.

[image2]
Right Click small image and save file for wallpaper image

[image3]
Right Click small image and save file for wallpaper image

[image4]
Right Click small image and save file for wallpaper image

Click the image for the larger version