8.28.13 We Wake In The Darkness of Almost Dawn

We wake in the darkness of almost dawn to a careful face lick from an enormous pup, signaling time to go out, which we do, stumbling into the front yard together ( don't bark and wake the neighbors; bear season beginning).

Back inside, there somehow is no return to sleep, not with chewing the bitter bit of Melatonin, not with meditation or breath; so finally we surrender to being up as the dark late August night falls away, the foggy, dew soaked morning slowly revealing itself.

Still in the relative darkness, I grab a large sketch pad and write without truly seeing it before me, drag out the pastels and mysteriously select a color for the trunk, then branches , then deep rootlets and finally the taproot itself, powerful and stabilizing, drawing nutrients from deep within the earth, aerating the soul, the synergistic relationship of so much in life. The room lightens, and I see the pastel was in fact a light brown, as I select a vibrant, true green and the stolid tree begins to sing with a leaf covered veil. A deeper green for grassy skirt between trunk and root; a deep rich brown for the soil that sleeps within the rooted soil, and finally a muted cobalt blue for the endless sky that surrounds all in that hint of ever present endlessness.

I think back to an interview of Joni Mitchell I watched last night, the careful interviewer with their thoughtful plan unfolded across their face, as she sat, brightest blonde hair in some elegant 50's wrap style, sitting, smoking away happily, legs apart, leaned forward without compunction, being her powerful, sensitive self.

Describing patiently but assertively the womb of her home, the absence of voicemail, the one phone, the sustenance of her paintings covering her walls in an ever changing ever shifting symphony of responsiveness, her lack of interest in listening to her music because it is always in the past, behind where she is now, or how she would handle that song now. The without doubt understanding of the necessity to take care... Of her self. To filter what comes from the world at her, to her. The care she takes so, like a sensitive plant, she owns responsibility for understanding the environment she must insist upon, for her to be balanced, to flourish.

 I've a bit of paper towel on one finger that sensuously traces first the deep edged brown line of the trunk in shade, then pats the leaves ever so gently to soften their lines of veins, and then the gentle methodical smooth ending of roots, of surrounding sky that becomes more cerulean by the minute, as I look up and then out my window to see the fog outside in the garden ,sweeping, pouring down from the dew soaked roses and awakening aster, pouring slowly down the fog filled field and skies, swept by an unseen breeze into the river's out waters below.