Bellingshausen Sea

The sun stopped setting three days ago.

The sun rolls around the horizon, now, like a cold steel ball in a pale blue bowl. The sun offers light, but does not warm. The light is cold. Harsh. Shattering across ice and water. Stars. Stars in the rest of the sky. Stars shining even with the sun shining there, trying to chase the stars away. The sun has forgotten how to chase all the stars away. How to climb like a god-king into the sky and outshine everything else, all the others suns, too far and too weak to stand against this sun. This sun has forgotten that way of ruling the sky and now it wastes its time chasing around the fringes, chasing the lesser of the stars, and they fade when this sun is near but return to mock soon after this sun passes.

I follow this sun with my eyes, across the driver's side window as it comes into my vision, then across the windshield, and then down the passenger side window. Finally it slides out of sight, not below the horizon, only in the blind spot at the rear of the car. I see this sun for a short time in the rear view mirror. Finally this sun starts up again, up the driver's side windows, and I know another day has passed.

Where does the day start and where does it end, I wonder, though the start of one would be the end of the one before. But I mean, is it when the sun slides up the driver side window? Is that morning? Is it noon when it is straight ahead, directly ahead in the direction I'm chugging, slow, so slow? Is that noon? But it's the lowest then. Maybe that's midnight, and noon is when the sun is winking at me in the rear view mirror.

I must stop thinking along these lines.