What does it take to wake up to a sky this blue, a cloud this amazingly cirrus, just floating up above the second floor balcony where I stand and greet this day?
Well first, it takes getting out of bed. Sometimes it seems like all I need to do is put the pillow over my head to block out the light of day and stay put for a few more hours. But it's August. It's not December. And pretty soon December will come and it will get freezing-ass cold, and the snow and ice will freeze the limbs and grass and all things green and turn them steely white. So don't think about that right now. Think about August.
It's been a really hot summer, but today it's not bad. The breeze blows through the screen window and it's maybe 70 degrees. I can hear crows in the distance cawing about some catatrophie, maybe they are discussing politics or religion. It sure sounds like it. And I can hear the jay bird requesting his daily ration of peanuts. It's August.
Okay, take the pillow off my face, do a back stretch because now that you're over 60 you just can't jump out of bed anymore. Stand up, shake the dull aches off and drag your old body over to the balcony door. It's been open all night so the cat can stare at the locked contraption that let's him in and out and wonder why he can't push through the clear plastic and jump for that squeaky blue bird on the wire.
A day like today with the sky this blue and the whispy clouds make me know for sure there's a God around somewhere that knows how to use a paint brush. This is too spectacular to have just randomly occured, don't you think? I do.
It's August, and there are changes in the morning to watch for. There are changes in the afternoon that will creep right by you if you keep your face stuck in the computer monitor all day. There are changes in the early evening when the sun swings around and filters through the middle part of the tree branches. And then, that mystical moment at night, when the blue completely disappears, and out of the deep, velvet blackness comes those tiny briliant white stars blinking or just floating around up above your head. You know the constellations have moved. The Big Dipper is behind me now, and Cassiopeia it way off in the distance and the summer is on its way out. It's August.
Some people don't like change. They live in a warm climate and it stays pretty much hot all the time, or maybe they have a rainy season, but here, in this place, it's August. And this means wild and wonderful things are going to take place. It's going to change. Yeah, it's going to snow eventually, but not right away. August is going to do her gentle sensual shift of hips, swaying this way and that, sending a mysterious wind, a change of smells, a heightening of the harvest. And it will be magnificient! Just wait and see.
I have fallen in love with August.
