progress

One of the greatest things about my apartment in Yerevan is the windows. They look out over the city's northwestern shoulder.

August, 2002. See the red line at center and the sun to the right.

Almost as soon as I moved in, I started taking pictures of the sunset. It's just so photogenic.

Recently, though, I realized I was leaning out over the windowsill to really see the point at which the sun was kissing the earth. N.B. this is maybe not a great idea 13 stories up.

So I scrolled back through my photo stream to check that I wasn't misremembering, and I marked the same buildings with red and green vertical lines in each of these photos. 

 

September, 2022. Red line now slightly right of center and of the light source.

I knew, of course, that the course of the sun is not constant through the year, that the line it draws across the firmament shifts from one day to the next. 

Early November, 2022. The red line is now at the rightmost
edge of  the photo, and a new green line to the left of the light source has appeared.

But I'd never noticed it this way before. 

Mid-November, 2022. The red line has disappeared,
and the light is left of the green line.

We say that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but--clearly--that's a general statement, not a specific rule on the compass rose. 

January, 2023. This one is zoomed out to show both lines again.

There's a lesson here for me, the person who longs for stability and foundation but keeps finding mutability and shifting sands. Something about the way the solar progress changes in its constancy. 

But I don't have it in my fingers yet. 

Stay tuned.