one of my favorite times of the day is when the sun gets to the place in the sky where it’s shining horizontally in at your eye level if you take it head-on. It gives everything a hard one-sided glow and long shadow, and if you’re looking at forms in between you and the sun, it’s even better – the detail disappears and you get a silhouette.
The sun was reaching at me from the horizon across the vertical bars of the fence around the swimming pool. The fast I walked, the quicker the blinks of light between the black bars, and the more dizzying the effect.
The thing is that you have to be in a flat place without too many high buildings around or else the sun is blocked. I remember thinking that was something really true that I had never thought about before with Manhattan and its skyscrapers – that you are usually in the shade because the buildings are so tall around that they block the sun. You get sunshine for the little window of time each day, between the tops of the buildings, if the light is even able to seep through the sky.
It was disappointing to me, because it kills a lot of my enthusiasm for New York or and wanting to live there someday. I just don’t know if I could really stay sane in a shadow box of shielded suns.
