Waiting for the sky to catch fire

Why I stare out windows
Toronto, ON
May 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I keep reminding myself to look out the window more often, because sometimes the stars align and you see something neat.

In this case, one particular star, our sun, was preparing to make its daily return to the horizon. And long before sunrise, it was already painting the sky over the eastern edge of Lake Ontario a ridiculously intense shade of orange. Or maybe it's salmon. Or pinkish salmon.

This scene appeared outside my hotel room window, and I used a long lens to capture the first glimmers of light just above the horizon. The time stamp says 4:40 a.m., about an hour before sunrise, and the Port Lands in the foreground are Ground Zero for Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs's Quayside smart city project. Right now it's all industrial, otherwise-wasted waterfront land that the digital futurists hope to transform into a Jetsons-esque showpiece featuring revolutionary urban technologies, many of which are still being invented. I don't think the flying bubble-topped cars and loopy in-the-sky apartments-on-stilts are part of the deal, though. Bummer.

I stared through my lens and wondered how technology would transform this still-gritty neighborhood, and what it might look or feel like after the bulldozers leave and the nerdiness gets switched on. I wondered whether its future residents would ever turn away from their tech-jacked reality, if they'd take the time to just stare out at the adjacent lake and appreciate the moment.

Because technology doesn't solve every problem or otherwise scratch every itch. And nature still has a role to play in helping us lead lives of purpose. A few minutes by a window watching the skies come alive was all I needed to learn this particular, albeit small, lesson.

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