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Waking at Dawn

It is so silent here that the softest of noises can wake me. This morning it was the rush of wings and mutterings from the two doves that seem to have taken up residence in the foliage outside my bedroom window. In the half-life between dream and waking it seemed I was back in a bedchamber in that small town north of Paris where two doves had nested in the tree just beyond our balcony where my beautiful daughter was conceived in that past, gone year.

It was just after first light, 5:45 by the red numerals on the coffee pot in the kitchen. I took the pot and filled it with water, put in the beans, and started the device. As it whirred and chuffled away, I walked out onto my deck that looks out over the brindle hills and down to the Pacific a mile or so away.

The sea seemed ruffled in large smooth circles, slate in the fading shadow of the hills but, as it rolled out towards the horizon, shading up into a charcoaled blue, then to a gray-blue haze at the horizon rising up into rose that gave off abruptly into clear and fresh blue.

Hanging just above the line of rose was the full moon gleaming gold in the exact center of all that I could see.

I watched it slide down the sky for some time, then I went back into the kitchen for coffee. When I came out to look again, the moon was gone.

Unexpected beauty rising in the center of all you can see.

Take your eyes away and then look again and it’s gone.

But the day goes on and the light rises around you and you know, with an abiding faith, that beauty will astonish you again when you least expect or deserve it; that it will come to you out of the dark on a rush of wings. There are many ways of this world and that one is not the least of them.

I thought for a moment about turning on the news to see what had transpired in the rest of the world while I slept.

I decided against it.

Held halfway between a death and a life, I’d already learned the news of the day.


“Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you”

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • ghostsniper February 5, 2019, 4:57 AM

    “I decided against it.”
    ===============

    Indeed. Start the day bad and the rest of the day will follow suit.
    11:30 last I stood out in the darkness and just listened.
    Nothing.
    Silence is golden.
    During the day this is rare.
    Seems people are constantly making noise of some sort.
    Silence is good for thinking, reflecting, remembering.
    There were no hoot owls last night and no coyotes.
    No nothing.
    Just silence. And them stars.
    Yes, them stars. Wow.
    THIS is why we moved here.
    NO people. At night.
    I yearn for a place that has no people during the day.
    We search.
    They are a virus, and not very useful.

  • A Tree Falls in the Forest February 5, 2019, 9:01 AM

    “Seems people are constantly making noise of some sort.”
    -ghostsniper

    If you ever want to know what type of person you are dealing with, listen to them…and I’m NOT talking about their choice of words even though that says much right there.

    Listen to the noises they make and their degree. Listen to their inflections and intonations. Listen to their background noise.

    When you do, you’ll realize there’s a cacophony of noise pollution these days. As if the words and the way people CHOOSE to to express themselves (yes, people do CHOOSE how to express themselves) weren’t bad enough, the volume settings they set for their lives are, to say the least, offensive.

    What people’s noises reveal these days is how people have long forgotten common courtesy. When a person CHOOSES to be noisy they are forcing their lives onto other people. It is not only discourteous and rude, it is a sign that as a society people are no longer able to function socially with civility.

    There isn’t a day that goes by where a car blares some obscene music, a person feels a need to share their cell phone conversation with a world who could case less, or someone at a library decides to have a conversation with another person who’s two isles away with little regard for everyone else around them.

  • JiminAlaska February 5, 2019, 9:24 AM

    8:15 in the morning, over an hour until sunrise.
    The Pacific’s over 400 miles plus a hoot and a holler to the South.
    A fire going in the wood stove,
    coffee in the pot, a quick read of American Digest and
    life is great, up here on top of the world.

  • TN Tuxedo February 5, 2019, 10:05 AM

    Alas. How I envy the man who can watch the sunrise at home, instead of through the rear view mirror.