(the following was first composed in handwritten form in a composition book with a speckled black cover made in china using a blue pilot g-2 05 pen. composition was completed today at 7:12am).

i’m sitting on a worn wooden bench on the atlantic city boardwalk. if the graffiti beside me is any indication, a fellow by the name of nate dogg beat me here.

ever since our extended family christmas party four months ago, i’ve known that i wanted to see a sunrise over the ocean. at the party, aunt bet showed us a photograph she had taken of the sunrise on the jersey shore with a seagull and foamy surf in the foreground. when i saw the photo, something clicked within me, heart or head i’m not sure, and it just seemed to make perfect sense to wake up sometime in the early morning hours and drive through the night to see the sun come up.

i’ve been waiting for a relatively warm and clear forecast, and this is about as good as it has been - around fifty degrees with a light breeze and some scattered clouds (which i should be able to identify in light of my atmosphere class, but alas…). wearing my grey university of toronto sweatshirt with the black jacket over top, i am feeling fine.

i fell asleep on the couch around midnight and set my alarm for two. i must admit that when it went off, sleep seemed an awful lot more desirable than driving, so i gave myself an extra ten minutes. at 2:17 i hit the road, and made a brief stop at wawa for gas, donut holes, gum, irish creme coffee with one pack of sugar and one creamer and a 20 ounce bottle of mountain dew to keep me kicking all night. i was then on my way.

i listened to fernando ortega’s the breaking of the dawn as long as the disc lasted, then switched to better than ezra somewhere in the vicinity of philly. the moon was low on the horizon in front of me and it looked like God had just trimmed his fingernails. i made one more stop, at a service station along the atlantic city expressway, one of those fluorescent-lit twenty-four-hour places with taco bell and kfc and whatnot. when i went inside to use the facilities, the cnn lady on the tv in the dining area was saying that 95% of americans believe that extra-marital intercourse is absolutely wrong, no matter what. when i came back out of the men’s room, she was saying that fidelity is not considered realistic anymore.

incubus took me the rest of the way to atlantic city. in the part of town with all the sparkling casinos with flashing neon signs and blinking jumbotrons, there were plenty of people milling about, getting into who-knows-what kind of mischief in the early morning hours.

before leaving home i had called david to get some pointers on atlantic city since i knew he had made beach trips in the night. i also looked on the map for the best part of the city to see the sun come up in the east. so, when i arrived in the city, i knew to turn left on pacific avenue and drive until i could go no further. this took me out of the sparkling neon part of town and into a neighborhood that was dark and eerily quiet. except for the lapping of the waves somewhere in the darkness, all was silent. as i walked out onto the boardwalk in the dark i wondered how smart it was to be alone in this part of town at night. i imagined what kinds of ruffians might be hiding out under the boardwalk in the shadows, just waiting to jump some unsuspecting passerby like me. now that the sun is up though, the neighborhood looks a lot more friendly, and I haven’t been mugged. yet.

the weather channel’s website said the sun would rise at six sharp, but according to my clock, it was 5:55. i alternated taking pictures between polaroids and 35mm, with some video on the side. it really was beautiful, and i know that my photos and video footage won’t do it justice. i thought to myself as i scrambled to capture the magic that maybe i should have just come to enjoy it and not try to take it home with me, except in my head and in my heart.

there was one other guy out here when the sun came up. he was a couple hundred feet down to the south. he walked out onto a pier of rocks just before the sun showed itself and he stayed there through the whole thing. i tried to get a picture of the sun with his silhouette out there but the angle wasn’t right. later, having seen me with a camera, he gave me his address and asked that i send him a copy so he could blow it up and put it on his wall. he is from philadelphia.

so now i sit here on this worn wooden bench with seagulls and the occasional early morning cyclist or jogger for company. when they pass I look up, wave and we exchange hellos or good mornings. people seem to be friendly here. maybe it is the sunrise that does it to people.

earlier in the evening, i was listening to an andrew peterson cd, and he sang the words to a song i had heard so many times before, but to which i had never given much thought: “everyone said you’re crazy / but everyone longed to go.” when i told people (a select few) of my intentions to come out here, most responded with raised eyebrows and questions about why i would want to do such a thing, and i think most of them thought i was nuts. but the idea of doing it makes perfect sense to me, and i suspect andy pete’s line holds some truth in regards to the whole thing.