"tomorrow will deliver a fresh faced opening in the turmoil"

I have no more than an hour each day I can call my own. Though I might spend most of every day alone, save for Rose The Skittish Spinster Cat's ever watchful eye, only that brief time really feels as though it completely belongs to me. Just after sunrise, I'm the only one moving. The yappy neighbor dogs still snooze. Even the freeway across the gulch fairly whispers at that hour. The Times hasn't yet arrived. The Muse wraps herself in emphatic covers, sucking every second out of her last hour of sleep. I've been up puttering for over an hour by then and feeling restless.

I step outside to immerse myself in the moist, cool stillness. Even in the middle of a heatwave, that early morning hour caresses. I'm up and just have to get out. My many years delivering morning papers revisit me, those days after true childhood and before clear majority, when I still felt like a minor master of this universe. I owned the early morning as certainly as any interloper ever owned anything. I move with impunity, no prying eyes ever witnessing my passage. I made my rounds, true to my obligations with a deep sense of absolute liberty.

The day has yet to define her purpose at that hour. She seems clueless and not even distantly interested in deciding anything yet. I might set a sprinkler before the searing sunshine can collect her tariff. Dew hangs off the lupine. The small finches have already begun their daily foraging up and down the backyard Ponderosa. The breeze barely luffs the flag. Rose wants breakfast no matter how much of last night's supper remains stubbornly clinging to yesterday's bowl. The magpies arrive to help me dispose of the desiccated remains. Rose barks at the birds as if they should care that she is there.

I might hop in the car for an early morning run up and around the mountain to fetch fresh milk. The roads nearly bare, I make it there in half the mid-day time. The store's almost empty, more clerks than customers, and everyone warmly greets me. We few dedicated early risers acknowledge each other with cool understanding. We're invisible yet, not having decided what sort of day this will be. None of us load up our shopping carts, each apparently fetching one or two necessaries before fleeing back to our respective lairs, where nobody's there yet.

During this fallow hour, I will select the focus of today's writing. Near the end, I will settle in with the keyboard again, composing another dispatch from Clueless central. Some idea will have bubbled up through the dawn haze, destined to amaze or disappoint me. The days never clearly determine any outcome. The Muse rises to remind me of my obligations. I'm never ready to hear that I will have to leave, that I will just have to slip down the mountain and engage in the bustle. My morning's shot by then, anyway. It hardly matters what I do then or where I have to go. I know tomorrow will deliver a fresh faced opening in the turmoil where I will choose to get Up&Out again.

©2018 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CluelessSummer, #PureSchmaltz