this is my present for kate...



A Note To Myself (and others)



The night! The night, the night I have spent. Awake and absorbing, the wash of radio-music playing over me, showered and slim, shadow on my chin. My cutoffs hang on my hips, the belt keeps them barely up. I made them last summer, out of a pair of jeans, jeans that were my father's, jeans that were his when he was seventeen and slim, a shadow only on his chin, a shadow then - but he's got a beard now, and it's grey. He's already outlived his own father, but yet he's in the midst of his prime.

And me, I am the young writer, goaded on be Kerouac and women and the blue light that is a particular of the night, the mist in the mornings of summer, the mist that turns the sky to peached hues of gold - gold, i tell you, believe me for I am the young writer, and all I see, I see for the first - the only - the perfect time! There is no touch like the first touch of a woman's lips to your cheek, there is no sight like the glimpse of your lover lolling naked in the shadowed light of a clouded January day. There is no feel, none at all, whatsoever, nothing can compare to the night, and the road, and the car, headlights pinioning the corners of treees and rusted cyclone fence, the wind, the moon silvered blue and beautiful, everything moving, motion, vibrant and alive, damn it, alive, d'you hear? Young for I am the first to be and the first to see, and the first to describe.

The world is but mine to write! To see, to be, the exuberance that you, my middle age-ed friend, and me, my future self, p'raps have lost, and p'raps, need to be reminded of!

The egg, the skillet, the sizzle and the rounded peaked green smell of olive oil sizzling, the hiss of the pancaKe batter on the skillet (iron and black, older than the hands that hold it gingerly, hot as it is). The insinuated rumble, the kitchen kitten grumble-roar of the coffee pot boiling. Barefoot! Barefoot! Barechested, I am a young man, practicioner of the ancient and arcane art of cookery, and soon, soon indeed, I will have the revelent revelatory roll of the mash of pancake and the sticky tar of molasses, the cleansing silk of the milk, cold from the fridge, cold and condensing the air on the glass. And then, and then! The comforting bitter sharp comfortable swirl of coffee (black, no sugar) from my blue mug (the mug my sister gave me when she was four and I, I was eight). My shirt, tight and old, my hat black and from a love I knew not of, and the door: open! Open to the morning, and down the steps I go, the caffeine moving into my system, the tightening of my stomach, the clenching of the veins in my head (I can feel them tense), the roll of coffee in my mouth, the swallow, the warmth spreading like a kiss on the back of my neck, the rool of pavement beneath my feet, the sun is smooth in it's projection, no beatings, not yet, but the insinuations of a hot day are ahead...

The rumble and roar of trucks and buses busy in the early hours on the thoroughfare a block away, the birds singing, and the hare, nervous behind the bush, hiding from me.

Remember this, old man, that you were young once, and once, you saw the morning with young eyes, and once, you saw everything for the first time...