the day i cried without knowing i did

We started trudging up the hill just as the Salat al-Fajr, the first Muslim prayer before daybreak, began.

I was there for the ride. I mean how much more beautiful can a sunrise be? I've waited for it in Bantayan island with my daughter and watched it appear, its rays of fiery orange and gold spreading out first the way children always draw the sun. The colors were spectacular and blinding. Can any other sunrise be more breathtaking than that?

"It's gotta be before 3AM," Eka, our driver, said apologetically. "We have a good one-and-a-half-hour drive to Setumbu plus the trek up."

So we set out in the unholy hours of the morning to chase what I've been told was the most glorious sun-up ever.

Soon, I was breathing hard from the steep climb, my legs straining. I hadn't known it was this high! Most tourists would go to the Borobudur temple and watch the sun rise against the stone reliefs of the many faces of Buddha. That experience would be quite sublime, though admittedly expensive. But Punthuk Setumbu offers an all-in-one option--a view of the sun rising over Mt Merapi and the famous Borobudur itself.

Shadows moved about as we reached the top. It was still dark but there was already a crowd gathered at the top of the hill--cameras all set up--murmuring eagerly in different languages. 

As soon as the first tendrils of red-orange hues peeked from the horizon, someone's camera drone started flying up. Our Yogyakartan friend, Heny, pointed out Mt Merapi etched against the skyline. Spread on the mountain's foot, villages including Borobudur lay blanketed in the shadowy mist of dawn, and up above Merapi, Venus still gleamed bright. On our hill, the early morning breeze blew fresh and cool on our faces. I breathed anticipation.

As splatters of vivid red and gold lit up the sky against the dark outline of Merapi, the murmurs became louder and livelier. Now I could see my fellow watchers--bulehs (white foreigners)  clicking away with their long, heavy lenses; college boys and groups of girls taking selfies; solo watchers sitting patiently, waiting for matahari to show itself. Soon, the hill was filled with carefree, multilingual chatter. Cameras clicked incessantly. The drone whirred. From somewhere below the hill, roosters started crowing in chorus.

It was daybreak.

And then the sun appeared. Bit by bit. First, the top of that perfect ball of red--slowly rising, rising, and finally breaking free of the horizon to reveal its full magnificence.

At that moment when my breath caught and nothing else mattered, I stopped taking photos. I just gazed at the sun stunned and overwhelmed. It was beautiful, so beautiful. Like nothing I have ever seen or felt in my heart before. There is nothing more to say. 

The hill had become quiet, everyone had fallen silent. I stood before that glorious magnificence in complete awe and humility. I had never realised until that moment how small and inconsequential I was compared to the grandeur of what I was seeing. But, strangely, I felt that I belonged to that greatness at the same time; that by simply seeing it and knowing it, I have become a part of it. Privileged, blessed, humbled, I realised I was crying quietly.

It happens every day. Every single day. It has for thousands of years and will still do for a thousand more after we're gone. Such beauty and miracle is there day after day after day for as long as we breath and live... and when we can't see it, it's only because we don't look.