bright blue sky

Bright sky blue.  Streaked orange-blushed peach across the low horizon.  It's seven a.m.  I'm going to Capitola in a bit, once traffic has calmed, the blog attended, tea imbibed.  Right now all I can do is look eastward.

Some mornings are magical, hummingbirds flitting, the atmosphere like Rembrandt was asked to decorate the sky.  Maybe that's what the artists do, stand in a queue of sorts, waving brushes like wands, Van Gogh and Renoir and Mary Cassatt, Monet and Picasso and endless dreamers and troubadours, all waiting their turn.  Like us down here, scribbling and praying, waiting for our moment in the sun.

As light arises, clouds are less stark, turning from peach to cream.  The blue remains like a perfect crayon, sharp and eager, asking for a child to pick it up, turn the paper into sky.  Deep yellow lemons hang from a tree, wide oranges wait in the corner, while the crimson bottom of the feeder wafts straight out my view.  I'm a teller of tales, but a sucker for colours; I don't know if hummingbirds really are drawn to red, but striking hues stir my blood, music too.  Something about a vivid palate, whether it's in landscape, yarns, embroidery threads or even crayons; I had boxes of sixty-four dazzling shades as a kid, but when I sharpened those sticks, then broke open to all those shards, it was like opening a novel, words spilling, each meaning something.  Sentences connect, leading to paragraphs to chapters to an entire tale!  All those discarded wax slivers had been for a purpose, to brighten the paper, increase the velocity of eye to colour.  To share my vision with whomever took a look at it.

That's all I'm doing as an author, in my own little corner of a big, wide world, where artist-saints use their gifts to brighten my sky.  It's fleeting; right now the deep blue has faded, the clouds murky and dull.  But for those seconds fires blazed across the panorama.  Our words are like that every time someone reads them, whether published or simply shared.  This morning I'm just feeling grateful; maybe it's Friday, or that soon I'll be watching the waves.  Or perhaps it's just being glad to do what I love.  I always wanted to be a writer.  Today once again I am.