its in the morning
when I feel my age, slowly
so slowly to wake up
I have never, so long at least that I can remember, been a morning person.
Getting up for me has never been easy.
When I came across Larry McMurtry’s, in his worth-the-while to read book, “Lonesome Dove”, description of how Captain Woodrow Call felt when he got up writing thusly, “Getting up early and feeling awake was the one skill he had never truly perfected – he got up, of course, but it never felt natural.”, I felt I knew just what Mr. McMurtry meant.
Am I a night owl?
A night hawk?
Maybe so.
Feed MORNING PERSON into the Google and you learn from wikipedia that:
“A lark, early bird, morning person or, in Scandinavian countries, an A-person, is a person who usually gets up early in the morning and goes to bed early in the evening. The lark (bird) starts its day very early, which explains the choice of the word lark for people who may sleep from around 10 p.m. to 5 or 6 a.m. or earlier. Human “larks” tend to feel most energetic just after they get up in the morning. They are thus well-suited for working the day shift.
The opposite of the lark is the owl, often awake at night. A person called a night owl is someone who usually stays up late and may feel most awake in the evening and at night. Researchers have traditionally used the terms morningness and eveningness to describe these two phenotypes.“
Morningness and eveningness?
I have to say I have not run into those two terms before.
I also have the predisposition of eveningness to look down on and even RESENT those who have Morningness.
When I am having trouble waking up I often recall that my sister Janet would tell a story of how one of her college roommates would start each singing GOOD MORNING MR ZIP ZIP ZIP.
Just on thinking about the title of the song and NEVER EVER experiencing it first hand I want to shoot the roommate.
I haven’t thought about this in years but realizing that with the Google at my fingertips I could search for the song
So I did.
Good gracious, worse than I thought.
Also now this song is my head.
Oh just shoot me.
Night time.
Late night time.
The greatest painting in the world for me, if you want to talk about something that moves something deep in my soul is Ed Hopper’s Night Hawks.
And just the title of Hemingway’s A Clean Well Lighted Place and the bells ring down in my toes.
Mr. Hemingway writes, “”I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe,” the older waiter said. “With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.”
This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good
and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.””
But life dealt me a hand that called on me to up and up early.
The last couple of days I have been dealing with a head cold as well.
Its a hole I am finding it hard to dig myself out of.
I get and shower and the coffee is ready when I walk into the kitchen.
I pour myself a big cup of coffee and sit down with the morning papers.
And I sigh.
Then I remember.
I remember that going back the last dozen years I got up a whole lot earlier.
And was in an even bigger funk in the morning.
Waiting for the caffeine hit to kick so I could somehow, someway, get into a car and drive myself into downtown Atlanta.
I know I did this.
From this angle I cannot imagine how I did this.
Moreover, how did I ever except that this was normal?
It was insanity in a harness.
It is the morning, trying to wake up, trying to come to life, that I feel my age.
Slowly so slowly I become awake.
Achy, eyes and joints filled with glue.
Thick cobwebs in my brain.
Is this what being 60 feels like?
Some days I climb out of this morning hole.
Other days I feel I am in the bucket and am content to be winched out slowly.
Either I do get out and up.
Or as the US Marine Corp might say OFF AND ON!
Off my butt and on my feet.
I’ll get there.
No Haiku For You 