Whatever Meaning it Has

The days are long enough now that if I wake in the dark I know I’ve woken too early. Even this morning at 4:30, too soon for my tastes by 40 minutes or more, I could just discern the slimmest of openings in the night, a crack from which the day would soon emerge. I thought to go back to sleep, but the cat was mewling incessantly, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to close my eyes against the emergent light, so I stepped softly downstairs to toss the cat over the threshold and light a fire. Day after day it happens like this: The cat, the stairs, the threshold, the fire, and it’s the ever-repeating nature of this ritual, the sheer ordinariness of it, that imbue it with whatever meaning it has.

Later I ride my bicycle across a landscape of exploding green. It feels like everything is springing to life at once, and it’s a very good feeling. The late afternoon light is diffuse and the air is so, so soft, almost as if it were embedded with gossamer strands of silk. Agitated by my passing, an obese beagle runs ineffective laps inside the confines of a fenced yard. He doesn’t bark, maybe because he’s too fat to run and bark at the same time, or maybe just because he’s not into multi-tasking. He’s not the least bit threatening, and wouldn’t be even if there wasn’t that fence. I know I could kick his ass, and if for any reason that didn’t work, I know I can outrun him. My bike is fast, my legs are strong, and the road runs steadily downhill, into a valley where the dandelions are in full bloom and the air is softer still.