On A Cool Foggy Morning

I love summer mornings when the city is covered by a blanket of marine fog. The air is cool and the noise of the day has yet to begin. A crow squawks and wrens and finches twitter, but man-made noise is still absent. By noon, the marine layer will burn off and the warm sun will caress the red tile roofs and white stucco walls that make this town famous and desirable. Everybody wants a piece of Paradise; the sun will caress the tourists wandering up and down State Street, and the tourists on the beach. Enough money is spent to keep the great wheel turning. But there is a different feel to all this for someone born and raised here, memories tied to certain streets, certain roads, certain houses. The kid working the counter at Sears probably has no idea that once there was a working dairy on the very spot on which he is standing. We need people to remember how then differs from now; how what was gave way to what is.

After fifteen years together, light still dances in my lady's soft brown eyes. There is joy when the heart of a man opens and he lets his secret thoughts spill out, one by one, a few beautiful and transcendent, a few ugly and mean, but taken together they make the man, give a picture of who he is and what he's all about. Maybe not for others, but for me it has been a long struggle to become comfortable in this skin of mine, and I know it's a work unfinished, that no matter how far I've come, there are still miles to go. But this I know: without her constant love and giving, I'd be stuck not far from where I started.

So, on this cool foggy morning, there is peace in my soul, my angels sing and dance while my demons slumber.

The key to achieving happiness is knowing when you are happy.