In Search of the Perfect Golden Hour
By Grace Vera
In theory, the best time of day should be the early morning, when the sun stretches the thin shadows into one another, the day stretching out before me in the same way. As someone who constantly feels like 24 hours in a day is not enough, it only makes sense that the hours of 7 to 10 a.m. would give me the peace of mind to sort out all thoughts from my weekly routine before the reality of time kicks in. It feels like the day hasn’t officially started, and I’m existing in a limbo of time where stress over my homework or my college applications is out of mind. When Monday’s math homework is put off, anything from a long walk to the cooking of an intensive pancake breakfast is up for grabs.
On a Saturday last June, I spent the entire morning testing out a new crepe recipe made with matcha. For hours, all I could think about was getting both the temperature of the pan and the consistency of the batter exactly perfect. My phone lit up from email and text notifications, yet I put all my energy into a zen-like focus, the batter on my fingers helping to quell any need to open my phone. In the early morning, the almost too-sugary taste of my coffee isn’t threatening like the same cup at 6pm, when the danger of staying awake until 2 a.m. looms over me. The entire day is laid out in front of my eyes, endless possibilities peeling off into every direction.
Yet, I find myself slipping into the later hours of the day. Trading one “golden hour” for another, I melt easily into the sun-drenched grass, silence pierced by chattering birds or the whir of a cyclist whizzing past, the air thinner, a better carrier of sound than the humidity of noon. On long after-school walks, I often find myself tuning into my surroundings in ways that I’m rarely able to. Telephone poles draw out the gangliest of shadows, becoming markers for the runner who needs to pace himself. In the bay, low tide exposes the sun-baked silt, staining the air with a sulfur stench. Driving through a grove of trees paints flashes of orange across the car interior, sending blinding beams at every half-second. My heart turns over, confessing its satisfaction at another day survived.
In the city, the word “golden” blends too well into “rush.” The sun’s last streams of light are confused for a blinking alarm screaming that the time is ripe to scramble. Worries aren’t put to rest with the sun; they don’t melt or fade with the length of the shadows - they extend long into the night. The stress of daily pressures doesn’t just end when it’s time to clock out. My mom always threatens to delete the email app on her phone, just temporarily, so that the never-ending nudges from her coworkers don’t cause her workday to spill out into the late night. Monuments of steel fire up, becoming mirrors of light who mock the sun’s power. Beams are shot in every direction, adding to the deafening, jostling, competing stimuli coming in from every angle. Car honks mix with trains passing underfoot and flashing symbols dictating where to cross.
The air is only thinned by the cooling of the sidewalk and the onset of a buzz that consumes my thoughts. Anticipation, it screams. With night approaching, I think it likes to believe that the city can provide something the suburbs can not. On a trip to Boston last year, I toured college campuses and found myself on edge each day that the sun went down, sensing that everyone else had somewhere to be, an event that they were anxiously awaiting that I was not a part of. Yet I think this buzz is only the overwhelming flooding of all my senses, which leaves me no room to stop and take advantage of another golden hour.
What adds value to the designation of the later hours of the day as my “favorite” must be the satisfaction and sense of relaxation that comes with them. When golden hour is too closely tied with rush hour, it leaves little time for reflection or even the realization that it has arrived. Whenever I visit the city, I always snap out of it once the sun is down, wondering when and where I was when the metal monuments were painted gold. The early hours provide respite from the overbearing nature of my responsibilities, but little introspection follows - other than a glance in the mirror when getting ready for the day. But the end leaves no time for this kind of mirror-glancing superficiality. The day is over, run nearly dry, there is nothing left but to reflect on the contents of my day. While the windows cast long, squarely shaped rays across my carpet floor, I can think about why I used the word “extrapolated” in daily conversation, or the thoughts that dominated my mind that day, like mentally preparing myself for a shift at work even though it was five hours away. It’s the only time when I can examine these thoughts with a kind of freshness which I rarely have time for. Peace arrives in a striking golden package, and never am I more accepting of it than when I’m in the comfort of my home at the end of the day - stress of my hectic life out of mind. ◆