Rising

Something had woken me up but I couldn't detect what it was. I looked at my phone and sighed, it was only six thirty. I got up and went to the bathroom. Still sleepy, with my eyes half closed, my gaze found its way out the window and I stopped mid-way, exhaling with an impressed sigh on my lips. A big grin quickly and firmly found its way onto my face, stretching from one ear to the other. And suddenly I was glad something had woken me up this early. I quickly grabbed my sunglasses and took a chair. I lifted it through the open window, placed it right in front of it, and me on top. I knew I wasn't allowed to be on the roof, but nothing was going to stop me from having the best possible view. It was astonishing. The sky was coloured in all shades of purple, orange, red and yellow. The sun had not reached the horizon yet, but its presence was powerfully announced by a colourful spectacle. I was sitting on the roof of a hospital, 200 miles from home. And the view felt fairly surreal – more like looking at a painting than reality. And the artist surely had made great use of her warmest and brightest water colours. One could even imagine seeing the brushstrokes going from left to right, leaving mulit-coloured traces.

A cold breeze ran through my still unkempt hair and sent a shiver through my body. I was still in my pyjamas and the sun wasn’t there yet to warm me. But I didn’t dare to go back inside to change into something warmer, because I didn’t want to miss a single moment. Instead, I hugged my legs to minimise my surface, placed my head on my arms, and looked at the sky right above me. There wasn’t a single cloud and the sky was still coloured in a dark blue with a touch of purple in it. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the fresh and clear morning air. There were a couple more buildings east of me that all had a mystique to them due to the early time and the morning illumination. In a few windows the lights were already switched on and I could see shadows sneaking around. But most rooms were dark, their inhabitants probably fast asleep, some of them in the arms of their loved ones, others by themselves, and some rooms probably entirely empty. I was wondering who might be in there, what brought them here, and for how long they would stay. But I bet most of them would probably prefer to be somewhere else. But not me right now.

I moved my gaze back to the spot where the sun was about to emerge. Watching the sunrise always set my focus back onto the otherwise unnoticed and unconscious rotation of the earth and made me think about our solar system and the universe. How tiny our solar system was comparison to the galaxy, how minuscule the earth was compared to our solar system and how I was only a petite human being out of billions. And yet, here I was, sitting on this roof, content about this special moment. Parts of me were glad that I was alone right now, able to fully be myself and not worry about anyone else. But parts of me wished there was someone here with whom I could share this moment. The sky was slowly starting to brighten, but the colours stayed the same. There was a forest between me and the small mountains on the horizon, which was wrapped in a coat of calmness. The sky was separated in multiple horizontal layers of colours that all smoothly blended into each other. Above the mountains there was a layer of purple, which was cut rather harshly by the next ribbon of a reddish orange. From there the colours blended to orange and up to a clear yellow where the sun was going to appear soon. The halo around the sun formed a half circle and gradually merged into the blue of the rest of the sky. The force this natural sight had on me was astonishing. It filled me with warmth, pleasant thoughts, and relaxation. Every second now, the sun was about to crawl its way up the horizon – or more accurately, but maybe less poetic: the earth was about to rotate a couple more degrees soon, revealing the view on the sun.

And there it was! The first tiny bit of the sun gleamed powerfully through the trees in the distance. Dipped into a bright red, the sun made its way up the horizon. From now on, it was a smooth and constant movement, revealing more and more of the sun every second. To my right, I spotted a plane, crossing the sky form south-east to north. Its white contrails placed a splash of contrast on the still rather dark sky. By now, about half the sun was visible and still flashing the brightest red. The intense colours of the sky slowly dissolved into less dominant spectra, but still unfettered and beautiful. The colourful halo captured larger parts of the sky and the dark above me converted into brighter shades of blue, slowly becoming the so familiar cyan of a beautiful cloudless day.

Once about two thirds of the sun were visible, its colour changed to an almost spotless white, still leaving a bright red halo around it. It was impressive, how quickly the sun rose. A couple of moments later, the sun appeared in a bright yellow, forming a v shaped outline on the bottom, pulling in the colours around it. The buildings around me were covered in orange and red, giving even the old rusty ones a spectacular shimmer. The sun’s reflection on the edge of the roof in front of me started to blind my eyes and I could feel the first rays of the day on my skin, finally covering the world with a pleasant warmth. The sun rose higher and higher, reaching its normal size and losing more and more of its colourful companions. I took another deep breath, let go of my legs and closed my eyes. Now absorbing the warmth of the sun on my face, my arms, and legs.

Tamara Müller