Diary of a Seed
White Noise The sun shined differently in Harlem. I couldn’t place what it was. It was the same star it had always been, same number of miles away from me (something like 93 million; it had been two years since I took the SAT but I remembered that fact because I had a crush on my tutor), serving the same function it always had. Yet here, in Harlem, it felt like the sun had a different attitude. It used to pour into our Bed-Stuy windows gently, gradually; growing with intensity as we grew more awake. By the time I’d got my eyes fully open and had snoozed my alarm for the fifth time, I was ready to welcome the light. But whatever sun they had here didn’t pour in gradually, it just opened the window once it was ready and made itself right at home. And it wasn’t the silent sun I always knew. This one brought sound effects—as soon as it rose and made its unwelcome entry into my bedroom, so did the chatter of the men who hung out on the block and the glaring horns of morning traffic and the bouncing of a basketball on the pavement and the yelling of a girl cursing her boyfriend out over the phone (and his voice too, since they’re always on speaker). The sun then became no longer a gentle recommendation to start my day, but rather a violently sudden awareness of being awake and a reminder that despite whether I was ready or not, Harlem’s day had already started. So my eyes were open. 25
