In an attempt to get more hours of sleep, I went to bed a little after 11:00 p.m. last night (early for me). But that only meant that I wound up waking up at 5:00 a.m., a full two hours before my alarm clock was set to kick in. I tried to make the best of the early start to the day by catching up on the stack of back issues of The New Yorker piling up on the bedside table.
I came across an interesting article by Dan Chiasson. He said the American poet and conceptual artist Bernadette Mayer recorded one month of her life by shooting a roll of 36 color snapshots every day, developing them at night, and keeping a diary of her impressions.
That was in 1971. Now that we all have digital cameras built into our phones and don't need darkrooms to develop our pictures, and since most of us have access to social media like Facebook and Instagram to share those pictures, Mayer's idea seemed like it was perfectly suited to this covid-begotten pandemic year of 2020.
I decided to give it a try. I put on some pants and shoes, tied my hair back, and went out in the cool air of the pre-dawn morning to take some pictures.
6:02 a.m.: Streetlights with moon behind trees
6:05 a.m.: Full moon setting in the neighborhood.
6:07 a.m.: Meredith Drive, Atlanta, an hour before sunrise (a full moon always sets exactly at sunrise and rises exactly at sunset)
8:16 a.m.: Book shelves (detail)
8:35 a.m.: Front yard, 75 minutes after sunrise
12:09 p.m.: Hot water bypass outlet
12:14 p.m.: Spring Valley Creek
12:21 p.m.: Street sign
12:25 p.m.: Eliot
4:20 p.m.: Flowers
4:20 p.m.: More flowers
8:12 p.m.: Watching the Celtics game on television (they lost)
Yes, I understand that Mayer's pictures didn't look like these and were presented in a completely different manner. But it does present a record of my day, and it got me up and outdoors before sunrise, something very, very rare for me.
1 comment:
I’ve been rising at 5:30am every work day for the last six years and, every morning, as I force myself out of bed, I curse a bit. A lot some mornings. In that time I’ve seen more sunrises, moon rises and moon sets than I can remember. While they are quite beautiful, and the calm of the pre-dawn is very intimate, it wouldn’t bother me if I never had to be up and out and about at that time ever again. There i said it - getting up at 5:30am every weekday really sucks. And, at the opposite end of the day, I have to go to bed ridiculously early in order to be able to get up at 5:30am and be in a fit state to teach a bunch of kids the next day. It’s Friday night, 8:10pm and I’m so tired I could crawl into bed this minute. I’ll probably sleep for a good ten hours tonight and no, I won’t be up before 8am at the very earliest.
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