To Rise or To Set

To Rise or To Set: Questions for the Sun

Florence, Italy

I always thought myself a morning person. 

But, driving home one evening, I contemplated the allure of night. Metallic high-rises and a thousand lights decorated the horizon of the city. My music was loud. It shaped itself against the contours of my car, pressing against me and through me. 

Equally, I loved when those very buildings were gilded by the sun, standing as sentries over a still-slumbering city. Perhaps, I think, it doesn’t matter whether the sun is awake or asleep. Like a feline, I am beholden to the dusk and the dawn, stretching towards this heavenly threshold.  

There is magic contained in these liminal spaces. I am inconsequential and anonymous, yet laid bare, as the sole companion of the celestial bodies that share these moments with me. Time is infinite and finite; I am no one and the only one. 

I am the most myself, the most free, at the edge of the sun’s orbit. 

— Gracie La Roux