I am alone in the world with my cup of coffee. Today will be very hot but the breeze is still cool. I pretend that I am at the beach. The sky is cloudlessly blue, but not hard and clear because it is June not November.
On my little second story back porch, I am surrounded by bird calls and trees only recently fully-leafed. I am on a ship—bulwark behind me, staring dizzily up but missing the heady rush of gazing down at a big slow boat’s wake as it rushes onward, ever displacing.
The coffee hits my stomach after ½ a cup. I am reminded of the perennial question, “1/2 full or ½ empty?” because my mug is from despair.com, a clever company that sells pessimistic products to optimists who wish to mock their more realistic friends. My brother gave me this mug for Christmas one year. A line in the middle of the mug is labeled: “This glass is now half-empty.”
I hear the recycling trucks on the street gathering empty cans, bottles, cardboard. Traffic. The sound system from my upstairs neighbor, the occasional dog bark, what seems to be a home repair project from a nearby house—sawing, hammering.
The birds are really twittering this morning, twittering and flitting. I think they’re happy because they can fly. They don’t remember the killer cats or consider that they might be carriers of the latest deadly diseases, West Nile virus or Asian Bird Flu.