Darkness Approaches

There is a new movie coming out called 30 Days of Night.

At first I thought it was about January in Seattle, but no, it’s about Vampires in Alaska. I guess there are worse places to live, especially if you’re not keen on those vicious blood-suckers.

I thought of this because this morning at 6:30 am I walked the dog in pitch black darkness. I started to remember last Spring when Lisa and I were looking at the calendar at when the sunrise would be back to 8:30 am or 7:30 am or even 7:00 am.

Hint: it’s a really, really long time.

After surviving the first winter in Seattle last year, I can now sympathize with those astronauts who orbited the moon, huddled in their little space capsule as they creeped over to the dark side, waiting to emerge to see the sun again and make contact with Houston.

Because it’s not that it rains so much here—in fact it doesn’t really “rain” at all here, which I’ll explain in a moment. It’s really the fact that it gets so dark in the winter. Going to work at 9 am in darkness and then leaving work at 5:00 pm in darkness really starts to get to you after doing it for weeks and weeks.

And during the day its mostly cloud cover, so it’s perpetually gray outside. All day long.

It’s a wonder so many people jump off the Aurora Bridge—look it up, its second in suicides only to the Golden Gate.

This is why I need to get one of those special sun lamps. Or take some “happy pills”.

As for the weather…

For those of you who don’t live in Seattle but would like to experience a typical day, please try this fun exercise.

Get a spray bottle.

Fill it with water.

Set the spray to “mist”.

Spray it above your head.

Repeat.

That’s what the weather is like today. It will be like that until December or so. Then it might snow. Then it will actually rain, the kind of rain that is recognizable as actual raindrops falling from the sky in force. Then it will go back to this mist. Then, sometime in May perhaps, we will see the sunshine again, peeking through the clouds.

On another note—I used to worry about my hair getting messy and looking all scruffy but not anymore. Now I just remember…I’m in Seattle. Everyone here has scraggly hair. Most men just tie it up in a scraggly pony tail and call it good. It matches their scraggly beards.

And I think to myself...somewhere in the world people actually care what they look like when they leave the house…

And there’s sunshine, even in the winter months.

I’d like to live in that place again some day.

Okay, so I know this blog has become a personal tirade and has steered off course from the original intent of musings on, well, the muse, so in the future I aim to stay away from the random diary entries about my mundane daily existence.

But the next few weeks I’m taking a break from all writing. It’s not that I’m blocked or giving up, just need a vacation to rest the mind. Also, I’m extremely busy at work and its sucking all my energy. On top of that, I’m organizing the Drama Guild Regional Meeting.

So I’ll see you in a few weeks.