I’m Up Now

It ain’t really winter yet.  It’s only the third day of November.  But it’s cold.  We’re in a new place and it is already clear as crystal that this place is going to be freezing this winter.  Chinese expat architecture from the 1990s, may as well be a drafty Victorian back home.  The heat’s up full blast.  The space heater is on near the bed.  Everyone is snuggling against everyone else.   Sweaters and sweat pants lie at-the-ready by the bedside.   You think twice before leaving the bed to go to the bathroom.

And with the winter comes the annual psychological challenge of getting up before the sun.   In the summer, the sun arrives around five.  But these days its already six thirty before the light appears over the trees outside my bedroom window.   If you head to bed early, you awaken in the dark.  Toss once, roll twice, begin to fret about all the things one might fret about.  I reach for my phone in the dark, knocking over a book.  It isn’t there.  Nor is it in my pant’s pocket.  I’m up now. 

Meditation on the cold floor downstairs.  I consider putting my back pillow, under my ass.  Yes.   That’s better.  Think of the monks in the Ganden Monestary.  This isn’t cold.  Toughen up.  A mouse runs across the long flat ceiling above me.  Presumably he and his family are cold as well.  Presumably this guy’s up early as well.  Fretting no doubt.  He has some pressing matters to fret about.  He doesn’t walk quietly enough. 

My younger daughter’s up early as well.  “Come on in.  You want to join me?”  “Sure.” Soon we have snuggle meditation, moving further yet again, from anything rough, transcendent and Tibetan.  The rodent family is wisely respecting our deliberate silence.  “How much longer?”  “Four minutes.”  OK then.  Lights on.  Music on. Time for calisthenics.  Reluctant, certainly, but we are warming up now, with every jumping-jack.