Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Driving into the Sun

Driving in to work this morning was very difficult for about half the drive; then when I merged onto the freeway, changing direction by 90 degrees, it was suddenly so easy! The weather and the time had conspired against me -- it is a very clear, east-windy day, and I left the house at a different time than usual -- and the sun was a fiery flaming ball of intensely brilliant pinky-orange light, just above a hands width from the horizon, so directly in front of me. Impossible to look at, impossible to see anything else. And I was driving straight down a highway which runs right into it. Why build a highway that runs directly east into the rising sun? Why not vary it a bit so that the sun is on the left or right side of the windshield, and not directly in the middle? I'm sure that would have been possible, and perhaps even easy for the Corps of Engineers or whoever designed our road system.

But that is not the question which fills my mind this morning. No. I want to know if I am somehow unlike everyone else, physically, that is, since I was surrounded, during this difficult and blinding journey, wearing sunglasses and with the visor down, and with tears running down my cheeks, surrounded, (I say) by cars going about ten-fifteen miles faster per hour, than I. How is that possible?

Really, how is that possible? Do they buy their sunglasses at some fancy-schmancy store that sells blackout shades? Are their eyeballs seared at birth? Do modern cars have windshields that filter out light? What?

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