The Shaft of Light

Ok, after typing the title, I suddenly remembered a scene from a Tom & Jerry cartoon (Heavenly Puss?) in which Tom's been troubling Jerry a lot (so what's new?) when the dresser suddenly falls on him and he has a near-death experience :) ...so there's this shaft of light that opens up in front of him and he's gliding up a magical escalator... heehee, but nope, hopefully I'm not tyrannical Tom and no, I haven't had my NDE yet (though, really, if there is such a thing, I do want to experience it once!).

It's just the skylight on the ceiling of my bedroom. Yepp, the one that wakes me up every morning at daybreak, that unfortunately being around 5am in summer. The feature that tells me exactly what weather to expect every day, usually a lot more accurate than the forecast for the day. The one that helps me tell the time with the reasonable accuracy of a sundial. That's the one!

So I wake up this morning, and I'm still under the sheets. There's an explosion of light in my room beyond the sheets, and I don't venture out unless it's really time to! One hand strays out to where my cellphone is sitting. Cautiously I look at the time on the display. Ah well, it's only 9:45am... on a Sunday morning, that's way too early! Ughh, damn this skylight! ...and that's where it all begins.

But it's not so bad. For starters, when I'm tired of working or reading or doing something else, I can always lie down and look up... into the sky. It's almost as good as my fantasy of a glass-ceiling'd house! It's wonderful how much one can manage to glean of the outside world from an 18" by 30" window looking straight up into space. On sunny mornings I see a broad beam of light that alights upon the west wall of my room. The beam travels as the day goes on, down onto my bed, to the floor, climbs up my desk and finally inches its way up the east wall towards the high ceiling of my room. At some point before it actually touches the ceiling it is scooped up and I see it no more for the day.

On a really hot sunny day when there's no trace of a cloud, I can see the shaft travel continuously over its traditional route. It's nice on slightly cloudy days, when I see the sun play peek-a-boo, the light in my room waxing and waning. I like the rainy days, though, when I can hear the pitter-patter against my skylight. I love staring out on dark stormy nights, my room in total darkness, waiting for that intermittent unpredictable streak of lightning to throw my room into an interplay of black and white. On winter mornings I can always tell the weather instantly, there's anything from a thin layer of frost to a solid twelve inches or more of snow on the roof, completely cutting me off from the outside world. To be completely honest I prefer the deep snow anyday to the treachery of a frosty day!

It's evening now and the first electric lights in the house are on. But my room is still reasonably bright with natural lighting. It's a warm summer evening and I can see the reflection of the sunlight in the few and scattered clouds. Gradually it will start to grow dark. I'll wait for the news to reach me through my skylight. Living in one of the largest urban locations in North America, where windows look out onto blank drab walls of the next house barely three feet away, a skylight is a necessity, and a blessing. And especially on the worse days of my life, when I wait to spot "something new, something nice" through my skylight. Maybe an eagle flying high overhead, or the glistening wings of an aeroplane. Late, late at night, when I'm ready for bed, I spend a few minutes with the lights turned out, looking up at the ceiling. The little glow-stars on my ceiling do their job well, but after the first few moments, my eyes turn towards my deep blue window. I can see a star somewhere high up, sometimes even the moon. The night is still. And however the day, right now, I'm calm and still and relaxed.... relaxed... asleep.