Til the sun turns black

 

I awoke this morning with the sunrise, gently, as if the outstretched fingertips of the first early rays had placed a hand on my shoulder. A slight opening of the eyes, a sleepy yet curious turn of the head and there he is -- that magnificent sun -- peeking up through my window.

It's really nice to wake up early this way, and with a sweet sense of peace in the heart. After a long, tedious weekend at work, the calm of early morning is most welcome.

Sometimes work feels like a whirlwind, spinning me just a little too fast through a carnival night of loud drunken laughter, shrieks, wild voices and people disappearing as fast as they appear. It can be dizzying in the way a dream-ride on a carousel would be, with a fiddle screaming in the backgroung. I'm not really a participator, I'm an unfortunately child being ushered through the monster's funhouse.

For as long as I can remember, I've kept the saying "You can do anything" fastened tightly to the strong back of my will. I can do anything! Anything! Except math, maybe? If I were an ant and math were the thumb of a giant man -- then I'm being smashed beneath it!! ((for some reason, my thoughts are thick with metaphor today)) It's so, so hard. When I sit down to study a single section, I can get stuck on one question for two hours. It makes me cry. Cry! It's terrible. This, this is suffering! Truly.

So, as I should be studying for an exam on Tuesday, instead I'm going to drive to Kennesaw, take the doodlebug out to lunch, and maybe climb the mountain. It's been ages since I've been back there... since our wild, beautiful teen years, when we so often chose sitting atop that great mountain over being held up in a stuffy classroom.

Here is a wonderful little poem I've been reading and re-reading for the last few weeks. It is by one of my very favorite writers, Stanley Kunitz, at the end of his life. It is touching, and tenderly sentimental.

Today's music selection: Ray Lamontange and Clare Fader

Touch Me -- by Stanley Kunits:
Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the enginge go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.


Photographs for today:
Investigating the incredible growth of hair... how did this happen overnight??

 

From Amsterdam, last summer: I like to look at these as if they were someone else, some girl I don't know... she seems like someone I'd like. Very inward, probably quiet, introspective.