1.
Three minutes until sunrise. That’s what they said on the radio as morning light slid into the bedroom thru the blinds on the windows behind us.
I’m lying still, she said. I don’t want the dogs barking, yet. But it didn’t last long, because when she rolled over (or was it me?), Mr. Guinness took that as a signal. And in that way the barking and hence the day began.
That was more than three minutes ago, so the sun must be up… somewhere behind the trees, maybe. But it’s still mercifully morning outside. It’ll be hot soon enough, but the air outside is soothing now. I know this, because it caressed me a few minutes ago as I took a bucket of shower water outside to pour on the long-suffering Russian Sage and Zexmenia growing by the curb.
2.
And the air was soothing at the luau last night. It was Dave’s 50th birthday, and there was roasted pig (complete with an apple in the mouth) and real flower leis and tiki torches and hula dancers with smiling faces and fluid movement showing the rolling waves and the winds blowing on the mountains and all those little pearly shells. There must have been something in the water, because I took the prodding that Gregg and Kelley and Trudy gave me and went up when the dancers called for volunteers… I didn’t quite embarrass myself, but let’s just say that my pearly shells were not as graceful as they might have been.
3.
So why the silence lately?
I’m not sure. This stuff flows when it flows, and my suspicion is that the spring from which it comes is filling other streams of late. There’s this project at work, you see. And I suspect that the flow has been going down that side of the mountain.
It has been exhilarating in a way. Software people love their work because at its best it is an act of creation. When you’re building a system from the ground up, everything is new and the sun rises for the first time every time you open a new file. When I open my laptop, there’s this world dawning before me — a world of my doing, my creation.
This, I suspect, is why it’s been so quiet around here, lately.
That and the fact that it’s not so much fun to sit at a computer, anymore. What’s up with that!?
and so on.
So…
That caressing morning air outside calls. And the sun will be coming up in earnest soon.
There is sitting to do on the bench outside.
Let’s leave it there, shall we?