Getting My Bearings

I get up early with ideas, connected thoughts in my head.  Thoughts that start my day.  I have to take them to the keyboard quickly or the escape.  Not so quick that a minute spent making coffee is a lower priority and one other thing.  Getting my bearings.

Where am I at?  Turn on the lights cause it is dark.  To the bathroom.  Look in the mirror.  Yes, it is me.  Fact of being is established.  Head for the front door turning on a light along the way to light the way.  Never leave anything  on the floor to trip over getting to the light switch.  It is a thing from my navy days where gear adrift in the passage ways was a hazard to navigation when the lights go out.  Hazards to navigation are to be avoided in the navy at all levels.  It is a way of life at sea.

Open the front door.  This is where I get my bearings.  Look up a the shy.  The big dipper is still there.  If I can see it.  Bu that is what defines this particular morning.  This morning.  Clouds down to ground level.  Fog.  Not usual but in its way a hazard to navigation.  Not like the raven dark, things can still be seen but like shadows of themselves diminishing quickly in the distance.  No problem if I stand still but moving, me to them or them to me, things can happen too quickly.  Like over driving headlights in the dark.

The street light is a point of light with a fag halo.  My first measure of the density.  Fog is different, quiet.  Once I lived in the BOQ on Treasure Island, the middle of San Francisco bay.  Primo fog there at times.  Its silence challenged by a fog horn.  On quiet foggy nights the horn is like a drum counterpoint in a silent orchestra performance.

I have my bearings.  A minute for coffee, a minute outside my front door.  Things outside not really seen because of darkness compounded by fog.  But I know they are there as sure as certain.  Like looking at myself in the mirror to start the getting my bearings process.  I see me know that everything unseen is still there for another day.

I am alive.  I know where I am at.  All things start from there.  I have my bearings.

Yes, knowing my bearings takes the course in a new direction.

I put my hands on the steering wheel of the key board and launch my letters, words, sentences, paragraphs in a letter to myself.

Where is that thought I wish to write and ride to where it may take me?

There was a time when it all started not by looking at myself in the mirror but looking at someone else when my eyes opened.  I seemed to have better days and directions then.