It is the crack of dawn, there’s a phrase for all time, like morning has a sound or a can make one, other than the early noise of sleep-farts. They say we pass gas fifteen times a night on average and don’t know it. Maybe one day there will be an app on my iWatch that will track such things, along with my deep and light sleep or time in REM. Maybe we toot ourselves awake.
It is the split of dawn, like the transition from dark to light is so abrupt, so snapping as if the sky pops opens to the light. We should hear trumpet sounds or the Star Spangled Banner or rhythmic drumbeats – heartthrobs to realize you are awake before the change to day.
It is the opening of dawn, like the spread of legs before the thrust and parry of lovemaking that often comes with this arousal and the new sun splashes the sheets and suffuses a cool world with warmth. We seek the heat as it travels from the end of the bed to the shower to the towels to the padding of feet down and out into the freshness of new air, devoid of inside smells, filled with bright scents and silent songbirds amidst a soundtrack of silence.
In that morning moment you can be awash in quiet. You don’t need to chat with the mockingbird or complain to the squirrel using your fence as a superhighway to the neighbor’s yard. In that morning moment there is no need to quarrel with the woodpecker who has taken up periodic residence in your eaves and will, in an hour or so, annoy the shit out of you rapping on wood of your home. In that morning moment there is no need to tell others you love them, you miss them, you’re pissed off at them, why don’t they call more often, they are too young to marry, you trust their judgement, you worry about their health, or the fact you prefer bacon to barley for breakfast. In that morning moment the background music is silence and that is why you rise alone and make your way outside.
It is in silence you just begin to taste worlds that so often collide in conversation and you hear their breath without trying to impress them with your own loud voice. It is in silence you finally hear the plaintive language of the child, the importuning of the wife, the cries of the neighbor or the news, without a need to lay a cover of your judgement over it all. You can just hear it for what each is - the outreach of another human seeking solace, seeking understanding, seeking comfort, seeking the cessation of noise that clutters their life as it does yours.
It is in the silence of the dawn, which neither cracks, nor splits, nor unfurls, nor opens but just becomes that you find the language of others. It is not yours. It is not mine. It is ours. And it is revelatory, just listen.