Changing light

When I woke up this morning the gray sky sat low and heavy on my neighborhood, and I felt sluggish and depressed and headachy and unable to stir up the energy to write. Email weather, that's what it was. Then in the afternoon the sun broke through. The stucco gleamed, the windows flashed‚ Frisco wore her finery. Instantly I was inspired: to go to the Post Office, to go the bank, to buy an iced coffee and sit in the sun. I ran into my neighbor Kevin and talked to him about this exciting book I'm writing. My friend Molly walked by and I told her that Kevin and I were talking about my new book. On the actual book I did squat.

Then came the magic hour. The light turned deep saffron, the shadows stretched long, and my imagination awoke. It's always been that way for me, as if daylight is a translucent wall blocking me off from dimly glimpsed ideas and enthusiasm, and as dusk comes the wall thins and thins until it vanishes. Suddenly I was eager to write. Too bad I had to make dinner.

I did actually get some work done, after dinner, as the sky turned dark. I had a good time with the passage where Bernarr and Mary Macfadden cross the Atlantic on the Lusitania, fleeing war in Europe and dreaming of conquests in America. But after a little more than an hour I'm already hearing bed time's gentle nag. I remember those days before parenthood when my nighttime inspirations would sweep me along for hours. That's how my best work days were, kicking in near sunset, rolling right through a primitive dinner and for hours after, sometimes nearly 'til dawn. Not a schedule you can stick to when you've got to start waking your kid up at 6:30.

Is there some way to reset biorhythms? Or some way to make professional discipline stronger than nature? You'd think by now I'd have figured out how to bring writing and real life into concert, but maybe the work itself is so opposed to daylight reality that it just can't happen.