Pre-dawn musings

2011, thus far, has been a year of early rising for me. I can't sleep past 7am, and most days I'm awake by 5 or 6, no matter what time I go to bed at night. Fortunately (I must find the positives), I don't have any place to be most days, so it's not like I'm exhausted at the start of a 9-hour shift or a day of classes. No, I just wake up in the darkness and wonder what to do with myself until day breaks and the city wakes up. Fortunately (again, thinking positively), there is a construction project across the street that gets rolling by 6am each day. The heavy, noise-making machinery doesn't start until 7, but there is an hour of darkness in which men in headlight-beaming hard hats wander through the muck and do whatever it is they do. I don't know what it is: looks to me like there are men staring very intently at walls. Specific spots on walls. For minutes at a time. I look down from my 11th floor perch to the hollowed-out pit that reaches, I'd guess, about 3 stories into the earth (maybe "stories" isn't the correct term, but I'm not good at guessing measurements, and my guess of 30 feet could be off by 20 feet or so, therefore I will put my measurement-guess into building terms that make sense in my brain), and I wonder, what are those men staring at? What do they see in the edges of that foundation wall? It's a mystery to me. Construction as a whole is a mystery to me. Here I am, living in this super-modern building with an open design plan which exposes the pipes and supports and concrete ceiling, and I think to myself, how the hell does concrete stay raised over my head? There are thousands of pounds worth of concrete above me, and it's all just hanging out there, as if it's SUPPOSED to be there. And I know, man has used stone and other heavy materials to roof buildings for many centuries, and most buildings (if built properly) will withstand the tests of time (and hopefully, in this city, the tests of earthquakes). I know that there are all kinds of formulas to prove that gravity is offset by force and pressure and that living in a well-constructed concrete high-rise is safer in some ways than living in a wood-built ranch house. I know this, intellectually. But I can't wrap my head around it. I look at the work happening in the pit below me, I think of that pit someday turning into a 17-story building (which is gonna completely alter the current view from this apartment, not in a welcomed way), and I feel a little unsettled. It doesn't seem possible. This concrete that rests above my head, it doesn't seem possible that it should simply hang out there. The city that I stare at, the thousands of floors of office space and residential units, none of it makes sense to me. And I am a true urbanite, I love living in a city and marveling at the man-made wonder of it all. I marvel at it much more than I question it's ability to exist. But during these pitch-dark pre-dawns of my 2011, when I have little more to do than watch and wonder, I find myself mystified by all of the mechanical truths humans have learned, all of the formulas and theorems solved. My head has never been a place where such things thrived. Theorems come to my head to take a nap. Yes, I can learn stuff like that. I guess I just don't want to. It's not like I'm scared by all of the things I don't understand; rather, I walk these streets with a certain amount of faith that all those mechanical things I don't understand are well-understood by others, and those others are responsible for putting those things into action. Those others are standing below wearing headlights on their hard hats and staring at walls, understanding some truths in those walls that I never will.

These are the thoughts I have when waking up too often in the pre-dawn dark. Thank goodness I have other people to observe during these hours. Imagine what I'd be thinking if I didn't....