There are several different kinds of mornings. There is the it is too early to get up yet but I will because I promised myself kind of morning. This morning is both heavy and light: heavy because it still carries some promise of sleep although you woke by yourself and knew it was time: light because the sky is not yet showing morning except in its way of being a little bit lighter than it was in its darkest hours. This morning has stars in it and flashlights to creep down the stairs without waking up ones friend. This morning fumbles and stumbles and has a kind of quiet and frenetic energy to it where you say to yourself, I don’t want to miss any of this. This morning is a chameleon because you still need to turn on the light in the kitchen to make breakfast, it is a chameleon because it almost seems like still night. Tt is tempting to say that all the mornings following this one are derivatives, lesser versions, but that is not true. Tt is just that this is the one most tinged with the fears of the night but which tells us that they are soon to be antiquities, forgotten trinkets of our imaginations, and that makes this morning something unique: it is terrifying but comfortingly, soothingly so.
The second morning is hopefully just starting as I finish brushing my teeth and walk with soft and clumsy steps on the path to the studio in socks and flip flops: clumsy because this is not a natural combination, clumsy because it is a warm, warm country, yet mornings are still cold and require long trousers two layers of sweaters or shirts. It is the morning where I know I will beat the sun it: it will hit the wall of the living room and I will be gone already. It’s not a victory but a treasure when I turn around and see the orange dust of first light on branches. I always want to make another cup of coffee but I never drink more than the first few sips: it is a ritual, though not merely. I try to work the most difficult work at this time because i am fresh and not worn, because my spine is straighter than it will ever be during the day. I write and I read it back to myself. I do not check my email. I make edits and write completely new paragraphs. I face myself and write down the weak points that I do not yet have a defense for, a reason to include. The holes and the flaws because it is morning and I am good to myself. This kind of morning is one but it is also a million different kinds. Every change is welcome and is also a death. I always mourn my mornings.
Now it is the morning which is nearly gone. It last for a long time but also for a short time because it is the morning in which i decide it is no longer morning. It is the morning in which I let it go and accept that it is the daytime or perhaps even noon in a little while. When i know that what remains of the day is to sort out the imaginations i’ve pulled up through my mind and make them concrete. It is the morning in which I say, alright, the work begins, because mornings are unbearably easy and difficult, but the rest of the day is more so because it carries the memory of what came before. the exertions are different in their natures. One is blank and clear and piercingly white: if it lasted for longer I think I could not have borne it, like an intense conversation with someone who looks you directly in the eyes. I always mourn the mornings but I always know that it is good when it is gone. The afternoon is gentler, more forgiving. Plump and fleshy, it bends to my will and I am good to myself in the way of finishing my coffee. Allowing myself to read a little while eating lunch, even if its not related to my art making. Taking a walk in the sun. Drinking a cup of sweet and milky tea while the afternoon shrinks into the parapets.
My mornings arent cruel but they are self contained. I sometimes think that I am like that, or perhaps I sometimes wish I could be, because I think then one wouldn’t need anything or anyone else. Then the others wake up. Come in with fresh hair and ask in a bright and soft voice if I would like some coffee. Arrive in their car and hang up their laundry, talk about yesterday and about rhythms and about working. Move yawningly through the kitchen and fry up bacon and eggs for a late breakfast.
If it was always morning I would always be alone.