Have you noticed these days how many memories and hopes begin with “pre-”, as in pre-Covid, pre-Election, pre-my aging self? The point’s usually that “pre-” anything (“pre-”automatic transmission, say) is better than now’s triptonic.
Yet very occasionally there’s simply no “Pre-” about it. It is Now. Such was the first day of spring, 2025, on Black Bart Trail. I don’t remember the date, but that doesn’t matter because each of us notices the first day of spring on different calendared days. For me it was a recent Monday, pre-LA. fires. (See what I mean about how “pre” functions?) Wm. Wordsworth might have summed up my ever-returning first spring morning with “Joy was it then to be alive!” He and Whitman are the poets in this piece. I’m the prose guy.
Dawn began that memorable day with extra brightness added to one of Black Bart Trail’s frequent fine mornings. Dawn uprose on her little cat feet under a cloudless sky. She brought with her a graceful replacement of darkness with the glory of first light. Given the lay of my land and placement of windows, as I lie in bed that earliest light starts at my left hand, progresses west-north-westward over my feet, and continues upslope, gradually removing the somewhat spooky moonlit darkness of various trees, alive and dead, as they raise their limbs—on this day of days—to salute the sun. My dearest wife Darca gets to doze through it.
The road beckoned this morning, and I dressed quickly as Nick and I got ready for our walk. Were I younger I might dramatize and write “We couldn’t wait to get outside,” but that’s not true—a morning like this one lasts a long time and invites what I’ll call savored dawdling. I needed fresh coffee. Nick needed breakfast, though at whatever time I start for the door he’ll stop in mid slurp and follow close, lest he miss the something drawing me-plus-him out… there.
There’s the road. Takes Nick a while to get to it. His kong-on-a-rope rests at the front step and he leaps out the door, snatches it and shakes its neck a hundred times as he bounds uphill to his favorite vertical, drops his kong, lifts his leg. Then we’re off, shaded and a bit chilly, but we can see Dawn’s light uphill and hear the neighbors’ cock crowing. Nick romps back and forth, turning my 300 yards into his 1,000 or more. He zigzags, I walk along until I hear my boring inner adult say “slow and steady wins the race.” I pick up my pace…a bit.
The reward for summit-ing comes in two-part harmony, maybe even three-part. It’s “Hi! Jonathan!” shouted from my neighbors’ front yard. “Good morning, Coral! Good morning, Poppy! Delighted you’re in it!” They run toward me and Nick. They’re barefoot on sharp roadside gravel, eager to show us whatever they’ve been working on in whatever material has come to hand. “Oh brave new world, that hath such creatures in it!” I say to Nick while thinking, Damn George Orwell and his irony for obliterating Miranda’s innocent love at first sight of Ferdinand. Poppy and Coral run toward us within their sun-clad aura of innocence. Running barefoot on one-inch gravel. No blood. Their aura gives them soles of leather! Suddenly shy, they avoid eye contact and wordlessly open their fists to display their treasures. They run back home.
Joy to be alive, indeed.
Of course time waits for no man. A pick-up truck in a cloud of dust has some place to get to and comes too fast around a bend. I grab Nick’s collar in time to save his life and for the pick-up to brake, suddenly. The driver and I recognize each other and somewhat stiltedly wave. The earth moves. I do not mean that Dawn’s early light has been put out. Nothing so apocalyptic or binary. The world has simply gone workaday, as it always does, Post- any Pre- in our actual world.–L.A. infernos, Gaza hospitals, Mar-a-Lago. The day’s still no more, no less than Monday, and now mid-morning and fading into Wordsworth’s common light of day, on Nick’s and my Black Bart Trail.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Another Voice: Pre- and Post- in our actual world )
Also on site :