It’s well known that we’re all a lot stupider and a lot more ready to believe things when we first wake up. So here’s my story.
I woke up a bit before my 7:00am alarm in the spring when the sun was rising not long before I got I up. It was just barely starting to lighten outside a little and I didn’t feel like sleeping anymore, so I sat up and looked out the window as I had the nicest view from that apartment that I will likely ever have. I could see across the valley and just over the next set of hills there was the rising sun, a brilliant flat orange but not so strong that I couldn’t simply look, at enjoying its color. The sky around still had most of the darkness of night, none of the reddening of sunrise which made the sun look all that brighter in contrast to such a subdued background. A single dark cloud cut a narrow horizontal line across the sun just over the midpoint.
I thought it was the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen and decided to take a picture of it even though I knew that my poor phone camera would do an abysmal rendition of it. It took me a bit to get the phone into camera mode as I really hardly used it. But then I looked back out at the sunrise to snap a picture and there I see that this beautiful sunrise had receded! It was shrinking back before my eyes, as if it had decided to turn around and go back under the world. I just watched helplessly torn at the idea that here this immaculate sunrise was wrong was going away and just wasn’t right. It seemed so sad and all I could do was snap a few pictures of it as the top dropped off the horizon. The sky was dark still and I took a few last forlorn pictures of the sun that was no more.
It was about that time that I realized that my window faced due West and I had often seen the sunset through it and so could never see the sunrise. My wits were about me just enough to check that it was infact just before 7:00 AM not PM. But after that I was baffled. What had I just witnessed? If this wasn’t the sun, what was that beautiful orange globe? And here the most stirringly grand thing I had seen in a long time was not what I had thought… I checked the news, and there were no large fires or explosions being reported and either way at such a distance something that large would have to have been downright cataclysmic. I was together enough to not seriously consider aliens, but I was rapidly coming up with all the other increasingly-implausible explnations.
Vg cebonoyl jba’g fhecevfr lbh gb xabj gung vg jnf va-snpg gur zbba frggvat. V gubhtug gb purpx guvf va nabgure gra zvahgrf be fb naq Jbysenz Nycun fubjrq zr gung V unq npghnyyl jvgarff n fbzrjung erznexnoyr pbvapvqrapr. Gur zbba gung zbeavat orna nyzbfg rknpgyl qhr Jrfg naq fb jnf whfg cnfg orvat n shyy zbba (avargl avar cbvag rvtug sbhe creprag vyyhzvangrq). Vg’f frggvat pbeerfcbaqrq gb nebhaq svsgrra zvahgrf orsber gur fha evfr. Vg’f beovg jnf pybfr gb crevtrr fb vg jnf arneyl nf ynetr nf cbffvoyr.
V unir arire frra gur zbba tybj benatr nf vg qvq gung zbeavat. V pna fgvyy srry rpubrf bs gur ybff naq pbashfvba V sryg nf gur jbeyq gbbx njnl gung jbaqreshy fhaevfr. Ohg V raqrq hc trggvat zber bhg bs guvf guna V jbhyq unir unq vg orra ‘whfg’ nabgure tbetrbhf fhaevfr.
Huh. As the poster of this, I actually made an explicit estimate to myself of how many points this would get. I thought I’d get just a few over the next day or two stopping at maybe 5 at most. Is this thread just upvote-happy and well-visited, or is there something in this that I should be doing more of?
Yes, I’m fishing for compliments. ;) Preferably useful ones, though...
It’s well known that we’re all a lot stupider and a lot more ready to believe things when we first wake up. So here’s my story.
I woke up a bit before my 7:00am alarm in the spring when the sun was rising not long before I got I up. It was just barely starting to lighten outside a little and I didn’t feel like sleeping anymore, so I sat up and looked out the window as I had the nicest view from that apartment that I will likely ever have. I could see across the valley and just over the next set of hills there was the rising sun, a brilliant flat orange but not so strong that I couldn’t simply look, at enjoying its color. The sky around still had most of the darkness of night, none of the reddening of sunrise which made the sun look all that brighter in contrast to such a subdued background. A single dark cloud cut a narrow horizontal line across the sun just over the midpoint.
I thought it was the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen and decided to take a picture of it even though I knew that my poor phone camera would do an abysmal rendition of it. It took me a bit to get the phone into camera mode as I really hardly used it. But then I looked back out at the sunrise to snap a picture and there I see that this beautiful sunrise had receded! It was shrinking back before my eyes, as if it had decided to turn around and go back under the world. I just watched helplessly torn at the idea that here this immaculate sunrise was wrong was going away and just wasn’t right. It seemed so sad and all I could do was snap a few pictures of it as the top dropped off the horizon. The sky was dark still and I took a few last forlorn pictures of the sun that was no more.
It was about that time that I realized that my window faced due West and I had often seen the sunset through it and so could never see the sunrise. My wits were about me just enough to check that it was infact just before 7:00 AM not PM. But after that I was baffled. What had I just witnessed? If this wasn’t the sun, what was that beautiful orange globe? And here the most stirringly grand thing I had seen in a long time was not what I had thought… I checked the news, and there were no large fires or explosions being reported and either way at such a distance something that large would have to have been downright cataclysmic. I was together enough to not seriously consider aliens, but I was rapidly coming up with all the other increasingly-implausible explnations.
Vg cebonoyl jba’g fhecevfr lbh gb xabj gung vg jnf va-snpg gur zbba frggvat. V gubhtug gb purpx guvf va nabgure gra zvahgrf be fb naq Jbysenz Nycun fubjrq zr gung V unq npghnyyl jvgarff n fbzrjung erznexnoyr pbvapvqrapr. Gur zbba gung zbeavat orna nyzbfg rknpgyl qhr Jrfg naq fb jnf whfg cnfg orvat n shyy zbba (avargl avar cbvag rvtug sbhe creprag vyyhzvangrq). Vg’f frggvat pbeerfcbaqrq gb nebhaq svsgrra zvahgrf orsber gur fha evfr. Vg’f beovg jnf pybfr gb crevtrr fb vg jnf arneyl nf ynetr nf cbffvoyr.
V unir arire frra gur zbba tybj benatr nf vg qvq gung zbeavat. V pna fgvyy srry rpubrf bs gur ybff naq pbashfvba V sryg nf gur jbeyq gbbx njnl gung jbaqreshy fhaevfr. Ohg V raqrq hc trggvat zber bhg bs guvf guna V jbhyq unir unq vg orra ‘whfg’ nabgure tbetrbhf fhaevfr.
Jryy, gung jnfa’g fb fcbbxl.
Huh. As the poster of this, I actually made an explicit estimate to myself of how many points this would get. I thought I’d get just a few over the next day or two stopping at maybe 5 at most. Is this thread just upvote-happy and well-visited, or is there something in this that I should be doing more of?
Yes, I’m fishing for compliments. ;) Preferably useful ones, though...
On rereading your post (and decoding the last part), I realize my explanation doesn’t fit.