I’ve always been sort of fascinated by endings and beginnings. It’s a mix of resignation and romanticism that might seem strange on the surface.

There’s this line from a poem by Gerard Hopkins that I think about sometimes. It was partly the inspiration for this blog. It says “all/Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.” I don’t like the poem as much as his others, but that line always gets my attention. In our North American culture, neurotic about death, it sounds morbid, but I think that’s just because we have trouble seeing the beauty in endings. Death and sunset just happen to be two obvious examples.

I think that when something is going to end, it is an opportunity to turn it into art. Something with a beginning and an end can be shaped, pared down, simplified, and refined until it is breathtakingly exquisite. Because a day has an ending–-”dies with sleep”–-you can do something specific with it.

Where there are endings, there is also eternity. Things are constantly ending, and the sun sets on every single day, but it always rises again the next. I think that on a subconscious level sleep represents that moment of uncertainty between the end and the new beginning, when you are waiting for eternity to burst into sight. Life is all about this in-between moment, in the dim early morning patience just before the dawn.