Serendipity – (n) finding something good without looking for it.
Sunrise – (n) the colours and light visible in the sky on an occasion of the suns first appearance in the morning considered as a view or spectacle.
The click clack of my thongs against my heels seem to BOOM through the streets at this time of day. I think these are the quietest and calmest moments of any given day…just before dawn. Clicking and clacking past still, slumbering homes to the end of the street, my anticipation gaining momentum with each click, each clack. The weight of my camera is so reassuring! I don’t feel alone with my lovely friend hanging heavily on my shoulder. The click/clack becomes faster and more urgent and I am nearly running when I reach the entrance to what I now know to be my portal to sunrise. Oh Man!! Did I miss something? I don’t like missing anything!
‘THE ENDLESS SUNRISE’ , created by Stefan Jose of ‘WORX’, debuted in January, 2012, raising money for Positive Change for Marine Life and The Jonno Howell Scholarship Fund through daily photos of the sunrise. 50 plus amazingly talented photgraphers took on the 30 day challenge. I watched the whole magnificent visual feast, culminating in an exhibition…through my computer screen, wishing every day that I had had the confidence to participate. I started. once the exhibition had finished, finally ‘brave’ enough. SIGH! Initially, it was to motivate me to take a photo every day. I had a great camera, had taken a course on how to kinda sorta use it but no serious ‘phojo’ happening! Pfffffft! I’d go weeks without touching it. Well alright then, I’ll take photos of sunrise every day and, well, that’ll work! And so it began.
A year later, I’ll do my very best to explain what it means to me now!! What I can tell you with a surity that is surer than sure, is that every single sunrise, without exception, is completely gorgeously different. What will I find? What will it be like? And then I burst through the portal and onto the beach. Mother Nature has had wild and chaotic parties down there many nights and shifted mountains of sand and then months later, moved it all back in. There are incredible cloud formations reflected on smooth sand, rocks perfectly rounded by the constant smash and tumble of the ocean, textures in sand that are constantly changing, wind, seasons, the planet we spin upon changing where the amazing orb rises. I consider that I have been incredibly fortunate and priveliged to witness so much in those gentle moments before and at dawn.
Then there are those sunrises that I can only describe as supremely’ GIANTFUL’. This is a very special word made up by my children and it means – massively, hugely, gianormously, staggeringly BEAUTIFUL!!!! On such GIANTFUL days, I have literally had to remember to breathe. There is the entire sky and reflection created in the water that no colour can describe….scarlett, ruby, ruby red and the deepest, burntest orange you could every imagine. A pair of pelicans let me get so close one day! SUPREMELY GIANTFUL!!!! I skip home after these sunrises with them seered into my memory and even though there is some space between them, I still have flashbacks and continue to skip through the memory. These are the ones that keep me going back! It has become about living in the moment, all of it changing, every moment different and mindblowing. I imagine while I’m there, in that zone, face down in the sand, phojo flowing freely that I am breathing in beautiful, deeply inhaling it. I carry that through every day that I see the sun rising over the horizon and on the occasions that I do sleep through it, things aren’t quite right, it’s all a tad askew!
Then it has risen. The day has officially begun and the World where we live is waking. The click clack of thong on heel is not so loud, it doesn’t BOOM. There are other sounds now. I have a deep sense of soul satisfaction at how my day has begun, what I have witnessed, captured and get to share with others. I keeps me continually grounded and constantly grateful for where I live and it’s incredible beauty, whether I have been sandblasted, rained upon, partially frozen, bathed in scarlett ruby ruby red and nearly touched pelicans, I am still in absolute awe, every single sunrise. Do it, just once even! I promise you’ll be stunned by the Serendipity of Sunrise and all that it brings. Breathe in some Beautiful of your very own! LOVE!!!
