For an exile, his plot is only memory and time. For an exile, his characters are only his surroundings — the palm tree, the cave walls, the demonstrative monkeys, the changing skies, whatever.

I don’t know if it is my age or my exile, but I have become terribly sensitive to the skies. It so happened that I was up at 6 am this morning. I didn’t particularly need to be up. I like being up early only when I don’t have to be up early. As a child, I grumbled to get up to an alarm to pack up for school. But of course, on Saturdays, I would get up even earlier and much more cheerfully just for cartoons. But it was not just the cartoons. It was that I didn’t have to get up early.

This morning, there was a chill in the apartment. It was not unpleasant. It went well with my coffee. I felt happy in my slippers. With no particular reason to be awake, or alive for that matter, I was content in my chill, in my slippers, and with my coffee in both hands.

I summoned and gorged on the silence. I didn’t care about the news or the weather and left the TV dead, canceled, grey. That really is its best face. When I work, I like music. But I didn’t let music in for this. Murph came up to me and set her head in my lap. She begged my willing and happy attention.

My attention spent and Murph pleased, I stepped out onto the balcony. I tested the air. Not quite cold enough to see my breath in the air. Close. But not quite. I’m afraid of winter, of winter skies, of the winter darkness, of the diminished sun, but not just then. I left that fear aside.

The sky brightened. Pthalo blue. Dioxazine purple. A haze of cadmium yellow. The sun came up over the buildings in the east, fluid, golden, charming. A riot of color. And, at least to me, I can see summer and winter struggle not unpleasantly in the sky.

And just for the hell of it, and because I already had my heart and my brain and my coffee going, I stayed up and took Murph for an early and extended walk.

And there wasn’t a thing wrong with anything.

SS