the quiet of early morning

I've had the by now infamous recurring flu, the kind that grabs you and hangs on for six weeks; you get better, almost normal and then, like a horror movie about ghosts, "We're ba-a-ck." So, last night I went to bed with chills and a mantra not taught by some enlightened monk: "Crap, crap, crap, crap,----", which was appropriate since it verbalized perfectly how I felt. I will repeat the wise words of a Mexican friend of mine: "There is no bad that doesn't bring some good, nor good that doesn't bring some bad." In the spirit of that, I will report that I had been concerned with the increasing tendency for me to go to bed later and later over the past month and at least today, I got up at a good Christian hour, right about when I would agonizingly retire normally. How refreshing.
It is still dark at Four, for those of you that sleep like babes well fed. It starts to get light just before five and the quiet is, well, remarkable. I suspect that there is some kind of thinking field hanging about and at about four a.m. the pollution level of the "thinkosphere" is not only lowest, but since so many of us are in REM sleep and dreaming, is actually good for creative endeavors. So, you don't have to be crazy or worse, a farmer, to have a reason to rise that early. The wild turkeys of La Conner are up and turkeying at that hour, need I say more?

When I used to go to Mexico, I often stayed in the small house at the back of my friend Victor's palapa (coconut palm leaf covered roof) restaurant and would get up early. It got very boring after about seven in the evening and going to bed was the highth of entertainment. I would wake at four, well rested. My alarm clock were the village roosters and the dogs, who would get into a shouting match starting at about three a.m. and being considerably weller rested, by five the crowing and barking echoed even into the deepest corners of my cranium. It takes a few weeks to get used to that, and then the good stuff starts. I would make good coffee, with a real coffee maker and write letters, diary, poems or study spanish, all the while noticing the changes in the light, the comings and goings of birds and locals, the sound of the sea waves breaking on the beach, the coughing of early morning Marihuana smokers, who would come to the scenic vista to start the day (in a more mellow way).
I miss that, so when I rise early, I get excited by the thought of going to the cafe, long before anyone else might arrive and have a Mexico morning. It is nearly seven, I wonder what is for breakfast and is it siesta time yet?