The twilight of this wintry morning penetrated through the venetian blinds into the bedroom, turning it into a dim blue photograph to my sleepy eyes. The shapes of the objects, on the wall, on the floor, on the furniture, the furniture itself, slowly started to take shape. There are the silver picture frames whose framed pictures were not yet discernible. The outline of the dark green plant made it seem like any object, maybe a sculpture, a bust of some strange man. The opened white laundry basket still seemed merged with the white closet door, both of that dark blue hue. The only object clearly declaring its identity is the box of tissues next to me, but that's because it's also right next to the window, the source of the blue light. I didn't want to sit up, let alone peek outside. I knew with this amount of light, little as it may seem, at this hour, there couldn't have been any clouds in the sky. It wasn't snowing, then. But I knew that there was still snow on the ground from the recent succession of blizzards. I could imagine that with this chill there was still snow on my car, whose wipers were still left sticking out to avoid freezing onto the windshield, unless, of course, some busybody decided to do something to it out of some wintry joy. At this hour, there was already some noise. Not too much, but some. I could hear a truck accelerating somewhere, probably at a traffic stop where the light just turned green for the driver. It was a heaving sound, as if the truck, like me, didn't really want to be put in motion. It's a physics law that to change a object from its inert state to motion force is required. Nothing, it appears, moves on its own will.
Footsteps. Someone was walking on and in the process cracking the remaining bits of ice on the cleared path. It didn't sound like the person was walking on the still fresh snow, which would have made a squishy sound that I often find very romantic. You know, that sound of boots on unpacked snow. It reminds me of two lovers walking in the snow in the middle of the night, sharing the silence with the roaring of their hearts. But what I heard, and it was the only footsteps I heard, was cracking of the ice on the path I cleared yesterday. Someone was going somewhere very early on this wintry Saturday morning in this quiet little town. I haven't even heard a train go by. Besides that one person who cracked a few pieces of snow walking in front of my house, and the sporadic trucks that dragged themselves on the artery a block from me through downtown, the world was still trying to wake up. I could imagine the cold outside. But at least I heard no wind that would make any winter day nearly unbearable no matter how many layers you put on and how close to melting the weather was. I say "melting" because on a January morning, you can only hope it's not too far below freezing.
So I sat there, imagining the outside. And as my imagination turned, I could see the blue light from outside getting stronger inside, that the familiar objects of my bedroom claiming their shapes and identities more and more. Light is pretty unique as a stimulant for our senses. The objects of my bedroom don't smell more, or feel more tactile, or colder or warmer, or taste saltier or sweeter, sound better or softer, from some external source, and without my own action. But their shape and look depend entirely on an external source, a light, and I can see them without my moving anything except, perhaps, my neck so I can see more things. The look of something is fed to me by light, no active participation is required. So half an hour later, still quite dark in the bedroom, I could see that the mass on my desk was actually the mess of papers I needed to sort out, or that the plant that could have resembled anything now appeared to have dark green leaves, and that the white laundry basket wasn't part of the closet door but had an identity of its own. So it was time for me to figure out what next now that I have stopped imagining things with the onset of more light in the world.
