Brilliance/ Resplendor

 

The speck of light through eye lids, not even a speck of light, but a shadow of light; the morning! of having slept through the night, that precious speck of a shadow of light through the eye lids, and the pleasant feeling of sleep slowly escaping through the throat and chest, through the tips of one’s breasts and through armpits. One stretches and lets out a little moan of pleasure, turns on one’s back, the residual sleep escaping through the belly button and vagina, through one’s biceps and elbows and forearms and fingers, and one lifts up her arms in the air, the speck of a shadow of light grows a bit more lucid, a bit more solid, a bit more demanding and a bit more urgent, daring one to open her eyes, daring one to see the morning, but no, not quite yet, not just quite yet, because remnants of sleep and dream are still slowly escaping through her.

Now they move through her hips and her buttocks and her cheeks and her mouth, and one sighs an audible sigh for the room to hear and observe, it bounces and falls slowly, ever so delicately, like a feather, on the floor. Now the sleep ripples through one’s knees and calves, some of it lingering still on her thighs and wanting to withdraw back inside, in the warm place, the darkness of her brilliant mind, her mind of monsters and thoughts and associations and histories and feelings that create the monsters and thoughts and associations and histories and brilliance.

Sometimes the brilliance is a hindrance and it drags her down, but not now, never in the morning, because the darkness then becomes her most trusted friend and ally, the darkness is where the magic begins to happen, an inception of thought occurs and her dream weaver ties it loosely in a dream to consider, and now, as sleep is exiting her body through the ears and nose, now it is on the soles of her feet and toes, now it leaves one’s body, the thought occurs in her conscious mind, but quickly! It rushes back, once more, to jolt her being into a new day, and the speck of a shadow of light becomes a blinding brilliance, a blinding flood of light as one’s eyes are now open, and one stretches once more with one’s entire body, one’s entire body oscillates with light and activates and leaves the night’s adventurous darkness behind with hard evidence now that the next day came, it is here! it was not just a rumor, the creatures that nagged her all evening with their boorish antics and badmouthing the future were just gremlins, annoying little things but essentially harmless, as long as one remembers who one is and goes to bed before midnight and drinks alcohol in moderation and doesn’t eat before bed and rations sugar and never ever forgets to work out her brilliant brain with those pesky exercises. Leg strength, after all, is brain strength, and brainfood comes always in the morning, and the gremlins who would like to eat her brains are easily fought when one has taken care of things. The flood of light and her guardian tree looking at her, benevolently, and with a knowing, ancient smile that never turns into a smirk or an obnoxious grin, are there, the sky is there, and the speck of a shadow of light reveals itself as this, another day.

Her body, awake now, asks for a gift, very softly and in passing.

Sometimes she has the power to give her body that gift, sometimes she tells it to wait. Sometimes the gift is given to her by another presence, but one does not automatically expect such things, although to have that mountainous presence in bed next to one is the purest form of worship of life, and to wake up to an unpredicted intimacy of a foreign touch the ultimate gift.

But such things are marvelous and perilous, and it must not happen too often lest one’s brilliance be accordingly diminished and, eventually, lost. More than anything, one fears the loss of her brilliance, so as the gremlins are off her back for the duration of the day, the light is blinding and alive, and her body is strong and vital and she will look after herself after her morning pages and healthy breakfast and brainfood exercise, she whispers to the room that it is alright, everything is alright, wonderful, even, and she throws aside the covers and, ravenously and with great enthusiasm, attacks her wondrous day.