I hear…

I hear almost nothing. Still early in the small hours of the morning, most of the house – child, child and cat, child, child, other cat – sleeps, and waits for the blaring ring of an alarm to interrupt the respite. Mine own announced its intentions to disrupt my rest twenty minutes ago; but by that time I was only snoozing, having woken myself a few minutes earlier by some subconscious trick that saw me know how to bring my body up from the ultra-depths before the clanging into the night, so that this experience is not so jarring. I wonder how I trained myself to do this.

My children sleep, but occasionally there will be a day when one or more is moving about at this hour. Bustling unceremoniously through a set of chores, or perhaps pouring and slathering and consuming a breakfast bowl of cereal. Yesterday one of them was returning from an earlier morning exercise class, abnormally energized about the day and invading the usual quiet reverie we keep for this part of our morning with laughter, and talking, and an energy we cannot usually abide. I did not like it. I wished she would simply remain quiet, and peaceful, as the rest of us usually are.

I hear no cats, either which means the large one cannot see the small one and be somehow, illogically, annoyed by her and begin his petulant, sorrowful hissing. Sorrowful in that it’s just sad that he seems threatened by her. Perhaps he knows it is her food which upsets his stomach, but, like an addict drawn to the very thing the very substance which hurts him, he cannot turn away when the opportunity presents itself, so he will invade her space, eat her food, feel it sit uncomfortably in his stomach, and then need to release it in a violent, ratcheting cough that leaves a half-digested, half-wet, half-brown/half-red/all disgusting mass of vomit on my bedroom floor, or my bed itself, or inside the occasional clothes hamper, deposited there with as much ceremony and attention drawn to itself as the Labrador depositing its faecal offering to the gods of the neighborhood while out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon.

I do not hear any of that, though, now for they rest, they sleep, they snooze, they wait for the hustle and bustle of the day to begin. I am awake, unusual too, for me, for I need to begin new habits. I need to reconcile my desire with my inactions, and change one to match the other. Since it is easier to change action than hopes, it becomes much easier to get up earlier and write more than to keep sleeping and to pretend that my desires for storytelling and writing in a meaningful ways do not exist, or that they have been somehow mollified, satisfied by the things I have done in other areas of my life, my e-mails, my press releases, my gland-handing and pressing of the flesh in networking, my research and construction of some other kind of work product for some other kind of client in some other kind of area. No, those things do no ultimately represent an adequate sacrifice to the God of Writing, and thus it is now my responsibility, if I wish to cleanse my soul, even if for only one more day, of my impurity of feeling, an impurity which says “you have not filled your obligation to your muse, you have not done what you have been called to do, you have allowed your talent to be squandered, you have not lived up to your potential,” if I believe I must atone for that sin, then I must make my penance and atonement here in this action with this burnt offering and this ink offering and this peace offering and it shall be good once more, and yea, and verily, and truth, and peace.