The Glad Game

You may have noticed the odd reference to early mornings - I say odd because the early morning and I are not the best of friends. This makes our rare encounters a special and agreeably new experience.

i had to get up early this morning for my weekly trip to the doctor - being slightly loopy/suicidal means you check in once a month to get more pills and generally catch up. I don't mind this appointment: I have a lovely doctor, agreeably vague and given to chatting about books and travelling. This week I minded it even less, as it has also been my check up with the psychiatrist which was rather gruelling, and seeing lovely Dr Knight meant I had made it through.

All of this was running through my mind as I sat at the bus stop this morning and then I looked up - there was an amazing blue sky, birds wheeling and flocking in the air and all was punctuated by the red and gold of the flirting leaves as they whirled in the wind.  And I had a moment, for the first time in several years I was strangely glad to be alive.

It made me remember other mornings when I had felt like the only person alive in the world, where rare beauty was unveiled because traffic and harsh sunlight had not yet refocused the vista into its daily ugliness. Horses galloping through the mist, the first signs of the sunrise on the way home from a night of dancing, the pale fingers of dawn as another Rock Challenge was over.

I have to ask myself why it is that I don't like the early morning since it apparently holds a key to some pretty wonderful memories. Then I got back home and was knackered - dived back into bed and slept for  four hours. When I awoke my moment of madness was cured - I don't like early mornings because they are too dammed early and, lovely as nature is, I love my bed.

So I think we can safely say that Pollyanna seems to be making a bit of a comeback - something to be glad about I think?

ODE TO THE WEST WIND by: Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822) I.    WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,   Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed   The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow   Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odors plain and hill:   Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!   II.   Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,   Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head   Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge   Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might   Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: oh hear!   III.   Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,   Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day,   All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic's level powers   Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know   Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!   IV.   If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share   The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even I were as in my boyhood, and could be   The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven   As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!   A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.   V.   Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is; What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies   Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!   Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse,   Scatter, as from an extinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unwakened earth   The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 'Ode to the West Wind' is reprinted from English Poems. Ed. Edward Chauncey Baldwin. New York: American Book Company, 1908.

Like I said - glad to be alive.