Darkness and Light

You ever notice how shitty everything seems at 4 am? I woke up this morning at 4 and couldn't go back to sleep. My mother says this is a sure sign of depression. No shit, Ma.

And yet, as the day creeps in and I begin to muster myself - take a shower, have some coffee - it doesn't seem quite as bad. I don't want to pander to optimism, here, but there it is.

When I went to school at NAU I took a wood-fired kiln class, which was done, more or less, in the Japanese tradition. We'd chop wood up into little bits all semester (between throwing pots, of course) and then, at the end of the semester, we'd fire the whole shebang for a week or so. We took shifts watching the firing and I remember how bleary it felt just before dawn. Yeah, I know, "it's always darkest before the dawn" sounds contrived, but like most stereotypical statements, there's a grain of truth therein.

Anyway, the darkness had a quality... a soul sucking, been-up-all-night-drinking, what-the-hell-is-my-life-about feeling...

And then, little by little, the darkness would thin out... almost imperceptably at first... coalesce into shades of grey, earth and sky, and then ever so gently, the light would ooze over everything, like honey...

And then everything was okay. Hell, better than okay. It was invigorating.