Dawn's Early Light

Avoiding a rhythm. Finding words, cluttering one's thoughts with, seeing the zeitgeist floating in your vitreous humour. Enough playing around. Comment t'allez-vous? Dreams one drinks upon. Bluffs with a view. And those who live the open book life, a journal, who handed the sharpened crayon to moi, guide ropes cast aside.

Trust completely. No hesitation. Host a wedding in July, leap off the cliff in August. Fourteen, going on fifteen, bluff eagles buzzing on nothingness. No bluffing allowed. Live the live every second, see submarine races in the main channel. Rocking on the back porch, sitting on top of an old ocean bottom, courtesy of the McGriffs, showing that heir-itage adds value.

Late summer on Gorham's Bluff, a guest in somebody else's dream. We've seen this Chatauquan vision in others' eyes - Seaside, Monteagle. When visions meet across ravines, when cloudtops and creek bottoms meld, flash floods soon follow. Critical mass. Boiling crawfish at high altitude. Ballet dancers and storytellers, Congo drums and tympani. Our species spending all we have, our time, on each other. No sequestering via mass media stereotyping. No battlements on mountain passes. We pass time back and forth like pillow fights. Padded love taps, not gloved punches.

A scientist approached me and told me about research that would not have been approved, whose outstanding, species-saving results would never have been reported, had we lived in a world driven by profit. I argued that I'd seen many research projects funded by forward-looking leaders who knew how to set aside profit for just such a decades-long project. Governments and other public entities are not the answer to every ivory tower question, just like this real estate venture. If you put your answer in a question or debate, don't be surprised when no one believes your sincerity. True sincerity lives. For instance, I looked in Dawn McGriff's eyes and she answered the question I hadn't yet formulated. Who loves the world with abandon? She and I do. We're here for the whole species, making spaces where others saw no gaps for living.

I'm still waking up, still walking around with my eyes half-closed but I'm not going to condemn myself or others in hindsight. I walk in the light of your vision when I see you know where our species is headed. I thank you, Dawn, here at the bluff, and Dawn, head of the bakery section of my local grocery market (Crystal's smile and service is the kind of pick-me-up that'll wake me up soon, I know).

While I take this quiet, late-morning of my life to understand the message my previous day's thoughts said in my dreams, and thus what to say to today's me who knows the great vision, the hints of the Great Realization, I allow myself to stumble out of bed, buying used laptops from the baggage claim vendor dressed as a young woman about to start college and major in the French language. Oui, mademoiselle. Merci beaucoup. Bon courage. And next time, when one says one plans to develop expertise in a language, have at least a few ready phrases with which one can carry on rudimentary conversation. Else, one is addressed as if one is a fille de pays simple who can say no more than Je suis nul en Francais, to which one may hear Quelle barbe! instead of Cette fille me botte or even a popular lyrical phrase, Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)? Garçon, check please!