Three in the Morning

"[Three A.M.] Doctors say the body's at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You're the nearest to dead you'll ever be save dying."
~Ray Bradbury in "Something Wicked This Way Comes"

"The time-between-times--that's just a folk superstition, more poetic device than anything else. It doesn't exist."
~Stephen Lawhead in "The Paradise War"

There's something special about three o'clock in the morning. Bradbury knew it, Lawhead knew it, people from time immemorial have felt that there is something about that hour. It may become an object of superstition -- Magical things happening only at that "time-between-times." Or perhaps it becomes a time for morbid introspection in the insomniac dreamer. When I was at Radford, three a.m. was occasionally bedtime. More recently, it's become the time for me to begin a new adventure. The world is asleep, silence reigns supreme -- and Jeanine is washing dishes, getting ready to hit the road.

Driving down the highway in the wee hours of the morning really does have a magic to it. The bakery trucks may be out, but most of the semis are sleeping by the side of the road. (It's always the trucks that seem to sleep, not the truckers -- don't quite know why!) There may be some fog, but I haven't met much rain at that time. The world seems in a state of partial being, neither here nor there. And in a hundred miles or so, about time for breakfast, the sun begins to rise.

What is it about sunrises? They always seem to herald the start of a new adventure, the beginning of something great. I love them in the same way I love Mondays, only more so. Mondays are great, because you have a fresh start on the week. Nothing can be too terribly wrong yet, because nothing has happened. A New Beginning. Sunrises are rather the same, I think -- only much more gorgeous and special.

My new apartment in Nicholasville (photos coming soon!) has a north-facing window. For the first time in my life, I can see the sunrise from my bed. How can you resist beginning the day when that sort of motivation is before you?

I know why birds sing.