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CHAPTER 2
THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO MORNING

THE LIGHT COMES UP. THE MUSIC STARTS. THE MUSIC FROM THE BIRDS AND crickets dimming, new birds singing announcing day. The window’s open, great light in the corner. In the corner, a little light much smaller than that screaming furnace, that sun. It never sets, the night not ending, depends on which side you’re on.
This is your mother, pretty isn’t she? Her father asked, gesturing towards a painting.
They had stopped in the gallery to look at portraits. The portrait frames were heavy wood, some more cast in gilded iron, some gold, some hard plastic, all around Rembrandt-esque family pictures. And she looked around at the gallery, looking for her own. She found it, younger than she felt she’d look, not having known before that night of any such shade, of any such shade of blue, or red, not knowing that each whistling bird had its own color, its plumage, its scent. On one side of the world the sun kept rising, into mid-day as we walked through the garden.
There were tomato plants, squash and corn. An old scarecrow had lost his form. And walking with my father through the scented hills, we saw horses in the distance! How strange! To see what only I had smelt and heard, how strange it was! Every golden sliver every ring, like the way the sun danced. And chickens were such oddities. I’d never thought that such shapes I saw were alive. What were boxes, dim origami shapes could cluck and fall from a tree, brown or light brown and come to life and fly off more defined than the triangles.
Those shapes were everywhere and glowing,
Come along, dear she said, come along.

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