Good Morning

Sometimes it happens, usually after a nice series of 6 to 8 hour nights of sleep that the brain has had enough rest. It is up and ready for action in the dark of the night although it blanked out very happily shortly after the head hit the pillow earlier. No amount of squinting at the red LED numbers on the bedside clock-radio will change that 3:42 to 6:42. But a little chat by the master brain may convince the busy brain to cool it for a while yet This is unacceptable! Sometimes that works and the next glance at the red numbers is more reasonable, say 4:29. But the body protests, it's very happy in it's warm little groove in the bed. Brain doesn't care, it's awake and ready for action.

That's the time for a hand to reach out and turn on the radio, always set to the NYTimes classical music station, WQXR. This morning a din clattered at me and I nearly turned it off but then I recognized some strains of Love of Three Oranges and thought, well, maybe we'll have some nice Mozart next. Alas, when the announcer came on he told me it is Igor Stravinsky's birthday. Russians before it's properly daylight! Egad! About to hit the off button, the announcer then said that Igor had written a concerto for Woody Herman and, indeed we would next hear a recording of The Ebony Concerto, conducted by Stravinsky, with the Herman band and Herman himself playing the clarinet solos. I pictured the toucan-nosed Russian in front of a relaxed bunch of hepcats, jiggling a little wooden stick at them. This I had to hear -- and did. And enjoyed. One never knows what fills those airways. It's not as if I am listening to an IPod loaded only with things I know and love -- it's a serendipitious world around me where I can discover something new and delightful before I even get my head of the pillow. This is one of the pleasures of accepting the body's rhythms and going with them.

When the music ended another little body voice squeaked it's demand from the center, "coffee?" And so it was something not long after 5:00 when I got up. A perfectly good time to start a summer day.