Sundials

As a kid, I’d lie in a sea of green grass, looking up at the ocean of blue sky, watching the clouds pass overhead, a chinook wind blowing over me.

Today, as I sit on my balcony, as I do many days during the warm (or blistering hot) summer days, the ever-changing clouds continue their swift pass while the shadows of buildings seem firmly planted against the ground. The concrete and brick towers act like sundials against the asphalt. Any given moment feels motionless but stay still long enough and it is like I can feel the rotation of the earth. I can pinpoint my immaterial place in the solar system. It is in this stillness that I feel the passage of time—more than I ever did lying in that quiet grass. The shadows aren’t still—they’re just taking their time.

The sun grabs hold of the horizon and pulls its way out of view, seemingly more quickly than it has dancing through the day, more eager to shine its light elsewhere for a time. The Earth pulls a blanket of shadows over me as I head to sleep.