| | Living in Manhattan can be a dark and dreary experience. Someone like me who moved from the west coast has a hard time getting used to the change in season and the rapid fleeing of the sun to just far west as it can possibly go this time of year and even farther away into the winter.
Today I went walking, to the post office and to buy cat food, and I noticed at 2 PM the strong retreat of the sun down 3rd Avenue toward the horizon. It is brisk and cool and the shadows are long and still mid-afternoon.
I noticed that at high-noon in the apartment the rooms were dreary. I have ample mirrors to reflect the light and luckily, in this apartment I do have 6 windows and both eastern and southern views.
I am able to see large expanses of sky as the tall buildings that are near me are a few blocks away. I am lucky to live on a block with low buildings.
At work there are often no windows. I often leave the building and it is already night time, this has become sudden since the time change and the early coldness makes it winter-like already.
My first Manhattan apartment was in the back and had windows which butted up against a small back courtyard of about 20 feet and then a brick wall. Needless to say I never saw the sun there.
My second apartment was not as bad but still , although there was an air shaft in the middle of the building and the noonday sun shown down through the middle of my apartment, I couldn't really see anything out the windows without stretching and there was no direct sunlight after mid-day.
I have been lucky about the mirrors, I have several large mirrors and they have all been found on the street. People abandon items on the sidewalk here as a type of cultural habit, it is an offering, a giving away of a nice item to the first person who is willing to take it.
I have done it several times with bags of clothing, cds, books, a vacuum cleaner, you name it, whatever you don't want and is still good, just set it on the side walk and generally in under an hour it is gone...
Anyway... the mirrors, I have large huge old heavy mirrors and a stained glass window that I found on the sidewalk and the mirrors reflect the sun into the apartment so that even when the sun is on one side of the room, there is often a reflection of the sun on the opposite side.
They have been building a huge building, condos, about 4 blocks down. It rises into the sky. Sadly to say, last year a worker was killed in a crane accident at that very building. The building now seems to be complete and finished with all mirrored glass.
When I came home before 3, I had a very nice surprise! The sun, although hidden at the moment for another hour or so behind the building on the southwest, it is reflected from the new building, in the southeast, and it becomes a second sun, so bright in fact that it can blind me from my bedroom window.
I now in fact have, a sun that moves from east to west, and while setting in the west, is also reflected and setting in the east.
I now have streaming sunlight coming from both the west and the east for a sunset after about 3:30 PM, which means I can now sun myself on my bed in the morning and in the afternoon!
... and with the mirrors in there and on the kitchen wall, I get "direct" sunlight, the real sun and the second sun coming off the tall mirrored high-rise that has risen a few blocks down, shining itself into my apartment while the sun sets in the east.
I have a second sun and see the sun going down in two opposing directions, from the sky and from a large mirror in the sky.
This is bizarre! I have a second sun!
I imagine I live in a huge sparkling metropolis on a planet with two suns.
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| | Posted 11/7/2009 4:04 PM - 49 Views - 14 eProps - 7 comments
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In Texas one sun is plenty. 
