Bug and Birds and Bookends by Patresa Hartman

I love the bookends of my day -- a still morning and buzzing night. I feel so pulled to morph with the earth, let the tides of my sloshy insides become the tides of the sloshly planet juices, leave the windows open, the curtains open, everything open and open and open. I like to sleep with the moon in view, although I've heard this makes wild women crazy. I am grateful for the crazy. I love the communion I feel when I am just waking and again when I am edging toward sleep.

I have my routines, of course. Although I think of them less as routines (habitual behaviors, like tics) and more as rhythms. My morning rhythm is timed to the sky brightening through the picture window in the living room, is textured by the smooth fiber of my red chair, smells like dark coffee, feels like newsprint. My evening rhythm is syncopated against a cricket chorus (They are sopranos and tenors.), a plane overhead, the television my husband watches, my neighbors clinking bottles and chortling through screened windows. Every bedtime comes with a soundtrack.

I am grateful for transition, particularly when it's gradual. I cannot wake and run, cannot run then sleep, and so I try to model myself after the dawn and the dusk, no hurry to show the peak of my color, but to revel in every subtle hue in between. I love a good journey. I want no rush.

There have been phases of my life during which time I got no cushion. There was little time to sit in the morning, and even less time to descrendo into night. Every day felt like lurching. My temper was quick, my emotions unpredictable, my soul exhausted. And so I think it must not be natural for us to begin and to end at sprints. I am grateful for the bugs and birds who teach me to step gently in and gently out.