Kinetic Energy

This morning I rolled out of bed and laced up my running shoes. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous morning for a lap around my neighborhood. Clear sky. The laundromat vented a hot smell of dyer sheets. Somebody's sprinkler-system kicked on -- the cold water nipped at my legs.

I'm an incurable morning-person. This has always been true. If there is a moment I'll feel peaceful, or well-assembled during any day it occurs before 9AM. I like being part of the hush of each morning as it falls, slowly, to the noise of moving things.

Years ago I studied poetry. Took a class where the instructor challenged us to understand the silence that preceded the text. The idea being that words rise out of some moment of acute pain, ecstasy, awe, anger, desire...without the acute sensation, the author has no reason to speak or write.

We used the same tools any poetry class would: scrutinizing the rhyme scheme, assonance, and imagery but for a completely different end-goal.

I was embarrassingly clumsy with the setting. Ask me (at nineteen) to kick into intellectual one-ups-man-ship and I was good to go. Similarly, I circular loop poetry to other poetry with the best of a freshman class. This professor, though, made a compelling case that the essential task of studying words is to understand the silence that precedes them. The notion blew my mind. It still does.

As I hit my stride this morning, I thought of that college classroom. My life now. How seldom I try to connect any past or present versions of myself. I smiled, thinking, the connection is murky water to explain without a significant re-write. Just then the sprinkler kicked on and I gasped at the sting of cold water.

______

Personal Soundtrack: So Pure (Alanis Morisette)
Dinner Line-Up:Lemon-Garlic Risotto with Parmesean, Mushrooms, Pine Nuts, & Black Pepper