And Now a Lack of Shirts or What We Miss Every Morning
A gaggle of us drove up to the top of the world at three this morning, in the insane half-reality of such an indefinable time. As befits the way we substitute innocence for bitterness, we substituted the sugar of a six-pack of cream soda for the expected beer, set up a blanket on the slope of Windy Hill (where, hooligans that we were, we were most certainly not supposed to be, from a legal perspective), a dim haze of ocean to our right, the flat, pinched inlet of lights on our left, twinkling like embers, the vast leafy darkness of the hills before us like some inverse canvas. Sharz and Ben sat on a stone bench at our feet, and the rest of us babbled and laughed into the rustling quiet of the night, all snuggled and tangled in air so warm it blurred the distinctions between our bodies and the world, and the moon was so astoundingly bright we could actually see, see each other's eyelashes and the flash of teeth when we laughed and the curves of spines as we watched the sky, the myriad glass-shard stars washed out with black because of that absurdly dazzling orb, leaving a very random smattering of shining pinpricks, like someone had left only the points of a geometry textbook, and faithful Orion lay upon the hills. Our chattering faded, the quiet leaking in, rocks poked unkindly at us, and when Jayne and Issa fell asleep in a bundle to my side, thier soft snuffles blended with that nighttime creak of trees, and as the quiet melded into our bones and made us still, the coyotes began to howl. So we listened to them, and watched a pale owl glowing in the moonlight, swooping, all this predatory energy moving under moon. The sky by the field of embers began to lighten, infusing brightness and pigmentation achingly slow. There was so much light it never seemed quite like night.
"There!" I recognized the molten speck embedded inthe lemon-yellow glow above the hills, "It's Venus! Goddess divine!"
"Yep," Ben agreed, "Venus before the sun," casually, as though he didn't recognize his own poetry.
Colors began to deepen, as though someone were boiling citrus zest, adding dye to the air, and we awoke, limbs loosening, and as the glow swelled I bounded up, unable to be still, and though in my excited flurry I missed the first and slighest sliver, suddenly the sun was there, shining white-gold ball, and I had never before realized how glorious, how insane it was, that a giant ball of matter could produce light, light which stained our highest hill first, light which actually brought warmth as though it were a deluge, a liquid, and blackbirds began to wheel against sugar-dusted blue sky, and my skin itself needed to feel the light, or perhaps I was just sleep deprived, perhaps just insane, but off came my shirt, off then came everyone's shirts, and we started coyote-howling and prancing about absurdly because there was no way to silently absorb so much beauty, and there was nothing as glorious as feeling the light.
(I can't believe I sleep through this every single day.)
Finally, when we had gone quiet again and were mesmerized by the fog and the liquid metal light and the shrieks of blackbirds, I turned to the group.
"I'm hungry; who's for breakfast?"
So we donned our shirts again, all politeness. And trooped to Buck's to eat enormous omlettes and be sleep-deprivedly bewildered by the insane decorations, e.g. giant unicorns flying overhead.
"There!" I recognized the molten speck embedded inthe lemon-yellow glow above the hills, "It's Venus! Goddess divine!"
"Yep," Ben agreed, "Venus before the sun," casually, as though he didn't recognize his own poetry.
Colors began to deepen, as though someone were boiling citrus zest, adding dye to the air, and we awoke, limbs loosening, and as the glow swelled I bounded up, unable to be still, and though in my excited flurry I missed the first and slighest sliver, suddenly the sun was there, shining white-gold ball, and I had never before realized how glorious, how insane it was, that a giant ball of matter could produce light, light which stained our highest hill first, light which actually brought warmth as though it were a deluge, a liquid, and blackbirds began to wheel against sugar-dusted blue sky, and my skin itself needed to feel the light, or perhaps I was just sleep deprived, perhaps just insane, but off came my shirt, off then came everyone's shirts, and we started coyote-howling and prancing about absurdly because there was no way to silently absorb so much beauty, and there was nothing as glorious as feeling the light.
(I can't believe I sleep through this every single day.)
Finally, when we had gone quiet again and were mesmerized by the fog and the liquid metal light and the shrieks of blackbirds, I turned to the group.
"I'm hungry; who's for breakfast?"
So we donned our shirts again, all politeness. And trooped to Buck's to eat enormous omlettes and be sleep-deprivedly bewildered by the insane decorations, e.g. giant unicorns flying overhead.