Over two hours I've marinated here in the winter sun's slow rise. To awaken slowly makes the morning delicious. To savor makes everything delicious.
My first alarm: Tibetan singing bowls, (a digital variation): Beautifully brassy tones sustain and revive with gradually increasing volume and steady, oceanic rhythm, rousing me each morning at 5:45am. Yes, each and every day I set the alarm for this hour. This alarm does not alarm me; it composes me. For this alarm never means "Get up!" but only serves to arouse my consciousness from sleep at the same hour--and with the same constancy--as the sun. At that moment I then decide: return to unconscious sleep as quickly as possible? Or: get up for a glass of water and a vitamin, catch the tail of a fleeing dream, indulge some fantasy, meditate, doze, think, read, listen to music, have a stretch, yoga, write in my journal... Nearly every one of life's simple pleasures is available to me at 5:45. Today I chose to marinate, and so now feel only tenderness.
Now, at almost 8, I am still still--bundled in my white bed, still soaking in this most lovely pearl-colored light. The overcast of this particular morning sky must be especially gauzy to filter sunbeams so. Everything feels soft, but none of it is yellow. It is less sun and more like the lissome light of a hundred moons, prodding the slats of the blinds, penetrating their plastic transparency, painting a nacreous sheen overtop the pale marble-gray paint of my large room. Head nestled neatly atop my squishy pillow, I am the pearl embedded in this big box of mollusk shell. Outside birds chirp and sing above the low-tide sounds of rolling transit on nearby roads. Gentle light, gentle sounds, tender softness, strong will to stay still.