A little happiness

When I get up at 4 am...the thing about it is, I'd like after I am done with being up to go back to bed. My cats and dogs do it all the time. They have an epiphany, rise themselves, lick some portion of their bodies, walk or run around as is necessary for the moment then in some near future time deemed appropriate, they settle back into slumber. I've always thought how convenient that was.

For humans, at least for this human, at this stage of her life, it's the death knell for sleep once one has turned on the light. After writing for an hour or so, I'm very satisfied and deliciously drowsy. I can think of nothing more satisfying than sinking back into my side of the bed and sliding the covers over my head. But I am faced with one of two scenarios:

• Two hours after four, it's six a.m and I have to begin preparing to go to work. I work a nine hour shift with a short break for lunch so I can pretty much bank on being completely exhausted by the time I get home.
• On the weekend or other days off, my partner awakes at six and comes downstairs like the pied piper, a trail of hungry animals behind her. If I go back to bed I feel guilty about leaving her to do all that feeding and caretaking.

So the upshot is that I don't usually anymore rise before 5:30. There's just no profit in it. Except today, here I am.

Perhaps it's the odd spring shift in the atmosphere I'm picking up but I just could not stay in bed. I'm currently sedately reading Annie Dilliard's "The Writing Life" and I'm keen to digest another chapter. It's such a toothsome read that find myself going through it slowly, savoring it's potency as culinary student would tasting a virtuoso tart made by a master pastry chef. Said student carefully discerns the elegant flavor profiles of the icing , the fine notes of the filling, the delicate browning of the crust before synthesizing the entire mouthful in one heady chew. Eating becomes a dual process of evaluation and ecstasy.

Suffice to say, I adore her writing, so much so that I sit here after a short reading session, inspired to write about it in the imprudent hours of the morning.

It's such a small thing, this rush of inspiration but having it, feeling it, detailing it here makes me very emotional...it's been such a long time since I felt this way.