Vernal Equinox 2010 - An Early Morning Day

Well, first of all, Happy Birthday to Janice.

Today is the first day of spring, and I got up early for once, 6:30 a.m., which I haven't done for a while. I've been on a late night sleep schedule: go to bed around 4 a.m. and get up around noon. It works for me and my writing days. Dinner is like my lunch.

But now I'm up. I forced myself out of bed and got moving. That's the trick when it's early: keep moving. Don't sit or lay down--that's instant sleep. Movement is key. Showers are good too. And of course there's coffee.

For me, there's a weirdness to being up early, especially this morning--strange memories hearkening back to my newspaper delivery days and all those sleepy school mornings that were only made palatable by the redemption song of summer.

But school days were not the only days that started early. Oh no. I've started many a traveling day at sunrise. You gotta maximize daylight when you're on the road, biking or walking or driving around and across the country.

Yes, sometimes you have to get up early. It makes things possible, like getting a lot of work done before the evening comes. I have plans for tonight, a party with my friend Ilyse, so I woke up early today, which is rare for me. But life is full of surprises, and I've learned to embrace them. It helps keep me nimble.

Marley looked a little surprised when I came down to walk him at 6:40. It was getting light, but no direct sunlight--that came closer to 7:00, which makes sense. The word equinox has Latin roots and means "equal night." And today we'll be having equal periods of daylight and night. Sunrise a little after seven. Sunset a little after seven.

Well, the clock is ticking and the sun is getting higher in the sky, coming in through the back windows of our home, filling the kitchen with lovely morning light, something I don't always see. Time to get to work--back to book 1--I'm writing a story that you probably won't be able to read for a while. Book time moves very slow. And publishing is still a long ways off, but it's getting closer everyday, and that's a nice way to think about it.

Mahalo.

Jeff

Spider Walk

So I'm staying with my father for a few days, in Virginia. I've been writing during the day and visiting in the evenings, and today turned out to be an interesting day, mainly for the events that happened while I was on my afternoon walk.

It's March now, and today was a really warm and sun-filled day. I took a break and went for a walk, just around the neighborhood and the surrounding lands. I hopped a fence and started walking on this paved path. And as I was walking, the sun was shining, and I caught a shimmer of something in the air. I didn't think much of it the first time--except that it was interesting. And then I saw the rainbow shimmer again. It looked like a long strand of spider silk. That's really cool, I thought. This spider web has some interesting reflective properties. I stopped to consider the matter further. There were some trees nearby, so I thought it was coming down from one of the branches, so I backed up and waited for the light and the silk to line up and create the shimmer again. But the shimmer stayed with me. It moved with me. I soon realized that a long strand of spider web was attached to my beard! This made me smile and cheer inside.

Now I had walked through spider webs before--we all have--but this was different. The web was stuck to me, and I was walking down the path, flying a long thin banner and telling the world of my spider pride. The wind was behind me--I should have mentioned this earlier--so the spider silk was blowing in front of me. It was a funny and beautiful sight. I kept walking, smiling, just marveling at the way things float and move around in this world. And I was a little sad too, worried that I had broken some spider's work. But I didn't remember walking through a web, so maybe the web had just blown into me. It was windy. And such things could happen.

I couldn't keep the web on me all day, but I enjoyed it while it was there. And then I gently pulled the gossamer line off my beard and sent it flying in the wind. No spider seemed to be present. I checked. And that's the story of what happened to me on my spider walk.