Morning

On nights I work, I have a 35 minute drive home to Aurora.

I like it.

The traffic is not too bad at 0600, and I like my work very much so I'm usually in a good mood. I'm usually very tired, but toss in a tall latte and even that melts away.

My drive home this morning, though, was particularly good.

I selected my writing play list from my iPod and let the windows down just a crack so the cool night air that was lingering and brace me while I drove the miles down I70 and I225 on my way home.

The music from that playlist is particulary good. When I've not listened to it for a while, I am surprized, sometimes by how much I like each song when I finally have occasion to select that from the list of 8 or so playlists stored on the thing.

The lyrics, in particular, are all very simple and describe deeply emotional situations in the plainest of terms--as if the emotions themselves were too strong to be held back. The writers could not work them into flowery metaphors or truly describe them with lofty diction. They required blunt, straightforward wording. And though simple and direct, the words still managed to describe the profound.

If the air were a canvas on which the words were painted, the songs on that list are like pouring the paint out in great splashes and blotches. Where working them more would be like trying to pour the paint out into the shapes and hues of a landscape or still life without using brushes.

It's raw. and it comes too fast and too strong to be controlled and poured into the fine lines and shadings that make up a portrait.

There was a feeling that emotion or inspiration was welling up in me, as well. I turned the volume up so that the sound filled the car like standing under a water fall and being completely surrounded by the rush of the water. And like the water, I could felt the music everywhere. It rained down on me in flashes of places and people and I let my mind wander from present to past and then back again.

In front of me, the sun climbed slowly from the horizon to fill the windshield with it's orange light.

The cool air swirling around me made me feel like fall was coming on the heels of this morning. The weatherman is, in fact, predicting that today will be the hottest day of the year so far, but I could tell this morning, that summer was losing the battle.

The frosts of September and the new snow on the mountains will soon be here. Aspens, so rich and green now, will catch fire and burn brightest gold in October.

Yes. It won't be long now till I'll have to wear sweaters when I go outside and I'll be able to see my breath when I walk to and from my car. Leaves will pile up around my feet, and the greens of summer will become the yellows, golds, reds, oranges and browns of fall.

And then the snow will come and it will bury the leaves. It will cover the streets and the grass, and everything will be cold. The dry cold air will hurt my eyes when I walk quickly down the sidewalk. My boots will weigh twice what they do with snow packed into the treads, and I'll take them off at the door so as not to track melting snow through the house.

We'll make and eat stews and soups with grill cheese sandwiches. We'll watch football on Sundays and pray for spring on Mondays.

Oh it's going to be great!