Charles Burchfield, Journals, January 4, 1915

The beauty of the day sets the mind into chaos.  Full of a million sensations, every attempt at descriptions seems forced or fantastic or effusive.

I did not see the sunrise. When, two or three years ago, I regularly got up just to see the morning I made a resolution never to miss the sunrises, I little thought how soon I would lapse into prosaic late-rising.

Afoot thru the town all day selling tickets. I would have enjoyed watching the day’s development from the top of some hill.

Early the sky was solid; a heavy milkish blue haze - nature had the appearance of having just a few minutes ago, been frozen solid, and then enveloped in a warm wave.  As if the climbing sun were the cause, (and perhaps so) yellow fissures appeared in dapple fashion all over the sky, and steadily widened until the sun broke thru, startling the snow into a yellow glare.  By noon, the sky was a clear watery blue; the sun was pleasant; the snow melted fast in the warm haze.  At late afternoons whisp-mists appeared to attend the sun.  The day seem to have developed for the sunset.

One may rationally describe noon day.  A sunset seems to call for heroic poetry, something far out of the ordinary -

The sun became a dull yellow glow - this is winter a soft dissipated glow above a white landscape - the whisps were rain-bowed; the yellow glow turned crimson; was gone; the color lingered.  The afterglow started in the mouth a faint pink that abruptly roared in to fiery salmon all over the green sky; the air was full of a pink storm - quickly it fell sway, all but the west where it hung above the purple horizon until darkness put out the color, as after fire.

Better indeed to work at hard labor digging ditches or filing automobiles seats than selling tickets.  Anything that requires politeness is degenerating - it saps the stamina of a man.  I have become so furious with myself that to gain my self respect I am inclined to hereafter insult all whom I met with profane answers.   Better say “Shut up” sincerely than “Good morning” with false pretenses.  How can one express sincerity who lives a constant lie with those he comes in contact with?  Politeness is a succession - not of petty sacrifices - but of petty hypocrisies.

I heard several redbirds’ “tchts” today.  I always hear them in the same places around the town.  It is almost unnecessary to see them for the single sound brings to my mind at once a flash of red against a vivid blue + white landscape.  I am elated to find I am as sensitive to these sounds as ever.  Busy writing this morning, shut up in my room, the first faint “Cht” electrified me and I was on my knees looking out the window.

Charles E. Burchfield, January 4, 1915