Adventure is in the air

Another dawn, another day

What a way

To start

Awake. Time? Three A.M. No alarm, no need (no blankets). I had turned of my light at 18 minutes past midnight. A little later than I had planned, but I had been sucked into Book Land. I remember waking up around 1:30, and again shortly after two. The air is still. Still and hot. I splash cold water on my face and decide to remind my brain that it is tired by reading. This has worked for me in the past. The concentration necessary to focus on words with eyes barely open usually puts me to sleep like a rabid dog. This time it doesn’t work so well. Picking up where I had left off at 12:18, the story quickly grabs my full attention. Finally at 4:18—a mere four hours after I thought I was bowing out for the night—I am ready for a second attempt at unconscious oblivion.

No such luck.

As I turn off the light, I spot the culprit responsible for my disrupted sleep patterns: the full moon. I should have known. I can see she’s on the way down, so I’m fairly certain that her influence will fade before too long. But then, I think, sunrise is only half an hour away. Maybe I’ll stay up to watch it before going back to bed. I set about making tea. While the water is boiling, I throw on some more-or-less presentable clothing and grab a few of the cookies I made last night. Once my tea is steeped and doctored, I head outside to watch the world wake up. It’s rather picturesque. What I’m seeing is not really the sun rising. It’s the changing effects of light on sky and cloud. The great chariot is hidden behind the neighboring buildings. My retinas are grateful for this fact, so I am content.

It is only on an intellectual level that I understand clouds. As I finish my tea, watching them make their slow but inexorable journey to the realm of Helios, my heart still tells me that they must be exempt from the laws of gravity. Some glide effortlessly, dancing through shapes of scone, buffalo, greyhound. (Buffalo is definitely a good sign.) Others hang impossibly still, perhaps caught in heavenly spider webs. Just north of east, the sun paints the nearest shape shifters in shades of peach and gold. Divine garments for the otherwise naked heavens. So much blue, blue everywhere.

I can’t possibly sleep. It is now into the fifth hour of the day, and a breeze has picked up. I opt for a shower and then a walk in the mercifully cool morning air. I wander down (and up) streets I’ve never travelled before. I see a few people. A mango tree. Frangipani everywhere, sweetly flavoring the gentle wind. I meet Lucinda, a beautiful dark silver-grey cat. She is very friendly, but on a mission of her own. She doesn’t stop for long. Eventually I reach a street I know and follow it to the end of my journey. My three hours of interrupted sleep are catching up with me, so I collapse on my bed and finally—finally—sink back into the land where dreams hold sway.

At around 10, I wake up singing Queen. That’s always a good sign.