I've always loved the sweet silence of 4am, 5am... When I lived in Vancouver, sometimes I would get up at these times, if I couldn't sleep, and walk down to the beach, watch the herons fishing at the shore in the early dawn light, feel the cool smoothness of the sand under my feet. I'd write poetry or meander through side streets and feel like I was sharing the secrets of a sleeping city.
These days I don't often leave the house when I'm up at odd hours, not least because my family and neighbors would no doubt find this strange and perhaps distressing. You learn to live within certain expectations. That said, I did tiptoe out of the house one early morning and go down to the seafront, where, as the light came up, I saw dolphins playing the bay, and soon a surfer on a longboard joined them. It was nearing 7ish by then, but still decidedly magic!
Even if I don't leave the house though, the early morning is a quiet, secret space. It's soundtrack only occasional soft snores from the other room, and now the steady hum of my computer. It's been a long time since I blogged to I checked my previous posts and found the one I started on Morocco, and decided I wanted to go back there in my mind. I watched the short video clips I'd taken, some from the Djema El Fna at night, musicians and performers and men who put barbary apes on your shoulders, and the videos taken from the roof terrace of the riad. The music of the streets sooths me, the steady bustle of people walking or on scooters passing through the streets, small groups forming to chat, sample the offerings of the food vendors, buy some fruit or mint for mint tea. A gentle breeze in the hot night carried the smell of meat over a charcoal fire, the sound of the call to prayer in the distance, feet on the road below, the buzz and beep beep of the scooters, children talking, gurgling, playing... the tempo slows, becomes more rhythmic, trance-like in my mind as I listen. I can take myself back there now, could fall asleep on that roof terrace, cradled by the rhythms and harmonies of life.
