This thought occurred to me earlier this week whilst I was pedaling along on my bike, feeling my skin shrink beneath the sun's yellow gaze. It was afternoon, above 105 but less than 110, sunny, and while I was still sort of getting used to riding after taking the summer off. And the sun was stealing my energy from me. It shot out at me, forced its presence on me, dried out my skin and made me sweat, then sucked up that sweat as soon as it formed. I kept pedaling because that's how the world works; but I grew more and more tired, feeling as if I was pedaling against the sun itself.
It's in that act of stealing from me that I happened upon it: "the sun is a vampire." As any will know who have studied a bit of literature, vampirism (which is quite frequently a part of Gothic novels/stories, as in of course Edgar Allan Poe) doesn't have to include supernatural figures that go under the name of vampires. It can simply be that act of taking something, like a person's energy or life force, from someone else. It's sort of like a person simultaneously weighing someone down and using him.
That's what the sun did to me. And my comparison I find makes sense on another level: in the seduction. I've often found an almost sensuous quality to the sun (please don't think I'm too weird for saying that: it's just a literary/poetical thing), just as there is that aspect to vampires/vampirism. And, of course, the sun is synonymous with heat, so there you go. The sun is a vampire.
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