Light

If I circle today's date on the calendar, I will need to write myself a note as to why.

For several weeks our mornings have been foggy or, as yesterday, clouded with what local weather gurus call monsoonal flow. It is tropical air with a penchant for turbulence that is pushed and pulled our way from Mexico thanks to a clockwise swirl of high pressure somewhere over, roughly, Colorado. Today the sky was clear.

What clarity brought was an awareness of the sun's shift. And an illumination that I would like to remember and, if I remember, track for no reason at all. Our simple interior geography features one window on the apartment's east end, a smallish slider in the bathroom wall. Today, at about 7:30, undimmed by pebbled glass since the window was open for breeze and sky, a band of sunlight spilled across the bathroom floor, ran the length of the hall, through the living room and up the west wall next to a bookcase. Now, a bit after 8, the band remains though its earlier brilliance is diluted.

We have lived here for more than nine years and somehow I never noticed this glowing phenomenon before. By paying attention for the next few days, assuming fog and clouds don't return, I can observe how long all the elements align to make this happen. I can be easily amused and light attracts me above most things, especially light that streaks all in its path with golden warmth.

To find newness where all was assumed to be the same, day upon day, makes me feel alert, aware. It is cheering to discover one's wits have not been so dulled that an electric swath of August sun across the carpet went unnoticed. I have no excuse for all those previous years.

Assume that one was waiting for the light, for a sign, a pointer, a path. There is now a circle on the calendar to say, wait no more. It is here.