A Timeless Dawn Upon Our Shoulders 

 

Dawn is the name of both of my Grandmothers. The reason why I also have the name. This is a written salute to them both, my mum, and the three strong and inspiring women who have shaped my perspective of this world. You know who you are. 

 

 

A Trenc d’Alba
Watercolour by Judit Prieto

   

Something changed today. On this average Monday in January. I felt serenity. After twenty-three years of endless daylight, Dawn finally returned.

 

              *

 I first met her in October, nineteen ninety-six. I awoke at three fifteen a.m. and she was already there. Outside my window, drifting upon murmuring starlings, warming the Autumn fogs. The sound of her heartbeat was enough to wake me from my dreaming.

I peeked out from the blinds. She was so beautiful! It was the first time I had seen her but from somewhere deep inside, I already knew her name. I opened my bedroom window and shouted.

“Dawn!”

She drifted past and whispered in my ear. It was elusive, soft, more like a feeling than words but still, I understood.

“Come with me to the sea, we must lift up the sun.”

But even before I had time to reply, she had gone.

“Wait!”

I ran down the stairs, threw on my coat, tied my shoelaces, and slammed the back gate.

“Dawn, wait!”

I could see her at the end of the road, this time walking. She was shorter than I had expected but more beautiful than I had first sighted. I caught up with her.

“Dawn, can we really lift up the sun, just the two of us? And anyway, why?”

She didn’t respond. Only smiled kindly and passed me a rope. The rope was heavy, heavier than the giant star it was tied to.

“I can’t do this!” I said, as I tried to manage the weight of the rope. “And I’m still so young and weak!”

But instead of sympathy, Dawn placed one of the two ropes on her shoulder, looked at me, and raised her eyebrows. It was the same look I had seen from my mum, when she knew I was not trying hard enough to solve an argument with a friend.

“Fine, here we go then…” I huffed.

I slung the other rope over my shoulder and we began pulling.

Both of our faces were red and straining but nevertheless, the fishermen and sailors that we passed shouted all about our beauty. Some even told us that we looked graceful whilst others sang to us a song:‘Heave ho the ladies go! Heave ho the sun shall show!’

We thanked them kindly and shook their hands and those who shook our hands carefully, made us giggle and helped cure our aching bodies.

But our bodies eventually turned numb with pain, no matter how many fishermen greeted us and how loudly they sung their song. And it wasn’t the weight of the rope that was hurting the most, what hurt the most was the fear of letting the sun slip back behind the horizon. What if I tripped? Would I have enough strength left to start again? And what if someone cut the rope, or even steals the sun from behind us? A tear rolled from my left eye as these fears played more vividly in my mind.

“Fear is only a downward hill. Come, lets run down it, see if we can pull the sun up faster.”

These were the first words that Dawn said to me since she had whispered to me from outside my window. She was elusive as the fading of the Autumn yet as present as the first blossom of Spring and these words made me trust her more than anyone. I took her hand, gritted my teeth and ran, letting gravity, the weight of the earth, lead the way…

She was right! Before I had time for another thought, the sun finally had began rising above the horizon. It teared apart the sky as we continued to walk, night clouds ripped in half and bled with greens, to yellows, then blues. Their colours were spilling everywhere, pouring onto the greased backs of the swans that were ruffling their feathers in the morning light. And the trees! They were standing there, almost awkwardly, like they didn’t know what else to do amongst all this beauty. But I imagined them as hands, reaching upwards, trying to escape the mortality of the world beneath.

I looked down. Like the clouds above I noticed that I was also bleeding though I hadn’t felt it. The weight of the rope upon us had burnt the skin away from my shoulders. I panicked. It was the first time I had ever seen my own blood and it was thick, clotted, scarlet, and somehow hurting the inside of my stomach. I felt that I was becoming weaker, growing as old as a mountain in rapid time. Dawn noticed my worry and again took my empty, hot hand. I wanted her to say something, to make it stop, but she just squeezed. She squeezed my hand so tight that it felt like she was a part of my body. It gave me the strength to carry on.

We reached the shore only when the dividing clouds above had stained the earth the same colour of the sky. Seagulls circled in happiness, in the illusion that the creatures beneath on land were also flying. At the shoreline, I noticed my best friend Leela waiting for me. She was waving casually, like she was expecting our arrival at this exact time and location. With my body aching, I had never been so happy to see her and so excited with her presence, I almost let go of the rope.

“Hold on!” Leela shouted. It seemed she had also feared the thought of the sun falling back behind the horizon and was afraid of me giving up so close to complete sunrise.

“Wait there! I’m coming…” Leela ran up the shore, with the same energy that I had when Dawn had whispered to me.

“Let me help you.” She placed a piece of white cloth between the rope and my bleeding shoulder.

“It’s my Aunt’s, it will stop the bleeding.”

I thanked her with a smile that we had exchanged so many times before and then she ran back to the shoreline.

“Wait Leela! Can’t you help me lift the sun up? We’re almost there!”

She kept running towards the sea. I knew she had heard me but she only kept running.

“Leela!”

I pulled the rope harder, trying to catch up with her, edging closer across the stones beneath and to the shore each time.

“Leela!”

But she was moving faster, and further into the sea, her waist was by then almost submerged in the sea water.

“Leela!”

As I finally reached the sea, Leela was slipping into the waves, waving but this time, I felt, she was saying goodbye.

“I have to go now because friends can’t stay forever but look behind you, you did it, you’ve pulled up the sun!”

I turned around to see the sky behind me. Leela was right, it was almost daylight. But now, where was Dawn? Where was the beautiful woman who had awoken me? And the rope and my bleeding shoulders which are now soft and unscarred? I turned again to face the sea. Only seven ripples across the water where Leela had submerged remained.  

I collapsed onto the stones in exhaustion. I was tired, tired of wondering what all of this meant and whether it had even happened. Leela was gone and so had Dawn and there was no proof of our sufferings, only my aching muscles and the sunlight of the new day.

I transfixed my eyes onto the waves. They were restless, continuous forever flowing. They reminded me that I too was forever shifting, changing and that Dawn and Leela were too. I continued to stare and the longer I looked the more I noticed thousands of waves within one, just as cells within a body or perceptions in a moment. And they were endless, rejuvenating and changing with every breath of wind. It made me feel sick. My mouth frothed with salty water, just as the waves hitting the shore and I tasted metal. My belly swelled and cramped and my stomach turned as though a whole ocean was passing through me. I began shaking, verging on the edge of the shoreline, of everything, of creation.

“DAWN!” In a midst of panic, shear fear of the death of myself, I called for her. My spinning vision longed for her soft sound and strength.

“DAWN!” I cried again, my body still shaking but my mind clamed and clear.

I felt her there, standing in the water I pleaded with. Half of her body was anchored to the permanent worlds under the waves, and the other half dancing in the chaos above. She was glistening, shining, just the waves reflected the giant sun that we had lifted to its beaming glory.

“Dawn, come back, enjoy the day that we have created!”

My vision was blurred with sickness but I sensed that she was fading into the darkened horizon ahead, the same horizon that that was once holding the sun from us. I realised I was in no control; I gave up shouting and savoured the final moment in her presence. But how could she disappear so soon after our suffering, I wondered, and leave me here so alone and sick? I wanted to share our first day together, in joy, in the new sunlight we had lifted. I felt I did not deserve to share the warmth of the sun as only one cold body. I rubbed my eyes to see her fading. The water came higher to her body and wave by wave, glistening into nothing, Dawn disappeared as suddenly as the gulls above glided towards other seas. I was left, confused on the shores of the new morning light and that was the last time I ever saw Dawn. 

*

Weeks, months, then years passed before the sun ever set in our town. With Dawn gone, so was dusk and the town therefore remained shining in constant daylight. At first, it was welcomed as a long summer but after not long, once crowds travelled from afar to experience the strange phenomenon and human chaos spilt into our once quiet town, people began to sleep little, worked long hours, and social time had become too plenty but fractured to be enjoyed. In confusion and sadness, I coped by avoiding the new faces in town and the modern ways of daylight-living. Instead, I spent my time alone, using any free time I had to search for another rope that was long and strong enough to set down the sun. But even whilst searching, I sensed an empty hopelessness; I knew deep down in my soul, that without Dawn nothing could be done.

More months and years passed and with little sight of Dawn, like the new crowds in town, I soon also became distracted by the noise of a never-ending day and a populated land. I decided eventually to stop searching for a solution and to embrace the reality of daylight-life as a tour guide, welcoming and showing new arrivals of people around the town of never-ending light. And with my spare time, I turned my time to the always open local pubs, where the fishermen and sailors sang of different songs about drunken nights and quiet women. And sure, I can’t say at all that I had a bad time! The new people I met were mostly friendly and the work was usually paid well. But sometimes, I would remember. And sometimes remembering would make me feel lonely. And on the darkest of days when I remembered, I would sense that Dawn was still there, in hiding, in a town becoming more and more satisfied with endless sunlight.  

 

*

 So who’d have thought that after all of these thirty-three years, it would be today, on this average Monday in January, that Dawn returns?

I had woken up this morning crying. I had dreamt of deep purples and blues, colours that reminded me of the sea waters where Dawn had all that time ago left, the women who, by now, I had stopped dreaming would ever return. I stood up from my bed and walked to the mirror with my eyes still salted and pouring.

My face seemed older than it had ever looked, my eyes were drooping and my hair was thinner, so I decided to move, to remind myself of my youth. I put on my coat, unlocked my bike and left.

The starlings chirped above, cheering me on as I cycled East. I found myself heading towards the sea. Daylight life was flying past, everything and everyone blurring into unity through my still teary eyes.

I arrived to the shore and too concerned with my age, I hadn't noticed the slowly darkening skies.

“I’m still young, I’m still young!” I was singing out loud, spinning, and dancing on the stones of the shore. Meanwhile, they sky, to my ignorance, was turning darker.

I fell backward and bliss and looked up.

A surge ran from the bottom of my spine to my head, it was that shivering life force feeling that is enough to stop time. I know she was returning.

“Dawn?”

I sat up and searched for her, starring across the sea and into the glowing horizon. Oranges and yellows deepened as the sunset reflected upon the water’s edge. And that’s when I noticed her, I felt Dawn, arising through me.

 

 

 

Visions of Dawn

     Album by Joyce, Naná Vasconcelos, Mauricio Maestro