morning rituals

Kathryn Spence, Pigeons, 1997, street trash, wire, string, rubber bands, glue

Some people have their coffee, some their morning mass and others still wake up to the Today Show. And those of us with dogs, well, you know what we have. The morning walk. A ritual that I now look forward to more than than the smell of coffee percolating, more than the sight of espresso steaming, more than the screeching sound of milk foaming. I never thought it was possible to enjoy something more than these sacred things. But. Look at me now.

My morning walk, like all rituals, begins and ends with the same thing: the donning and the shedding of many layers, the leashing and the unleashing, the picking up and the letting go of a plastic bag. We button up, we grab our coffee and we hit the road. What is most enjoyable about this ritual is that we walk the same route every morning, we reach the same landmarks, we see many of the same people. And yet, what is most striking about traversing the exact same path day after day are all the subtle changes: the ones that weather, season and sunlight afford. It is the closest to religion I get. And I look forward to it more than anything.

The walk begins as we cut through the park. We pass the empty playground, we notice our breath in the air, and often the grass is full of dew, sometimes, even, brittle with frost. We head down the stairs, we come to the barren baseball field, we marvel at the energy of the tennis players so sprightly in the bitter cold and pale light. We come across the one or two ambitious joggers, the all-business dog walkers, and the middle-aged Asian couples comfortably bundled in sweats. We walk past the pond with its sleeping ducks, its one solemn egret and its still marsh reeds. And the moment I first lay eyes on the sea, like the exquisiteness of a first kiss, is the moment my day officially begins.

Once we are walking along side the beach, I notice everything. How calm or furious the tide is, the colors of the leaves on the ground, the wee little plovers alight on the sand. I mark the winterness of the trees, whose nests have become suddenly visible by their nakedness. I regard the cast of the sun on the water. I near the paved walkway, my second landmark, where the shifting tides swell over or under to reveal it's architecture. And like a prayer, a meditation, a really impossible yoga move, I am unabashedly thankful. On days like today, with the sea high and frothy, the moon sufficiently waxed, the air crisp and the coffee hot in my hand, I stand and ponder my good fortune. It's not a bad way to start the day.

The walk from there is brisk and to the point. We approach the school playground, the sounds of recess and PE echoing across the water, we pass, for the second time, the elderly man who carries a camera and whom I see, not once, but twice, each morning, we exchange another good day greeting, and we reach the house with the Butoh, or perhaps it's Kabuki puppets and bottle tree. This is the third and final landmark by which I measure my walk: a row of Butoh puppets mysteriously lining the entire windowed-wall of this last house on the water. Most of the puppets face inward, but a select few look down on us forlornly as we reach the sidewalk and leave the ocean's side. Depending on the light, the blue bottle trees leave either a tragic or regal impression.

By this point I am already thinking of all the things I have to do that day. I am dreading or looking forward to going into the office, I am ready for breakfast, I am making lists in my head. I stop noticing. I turn inward. I obsess, or stress, or act the way I normally act throughout the day, mostly as if my eyes were blinded and my ears plugged. I act the way we all act. The walk is officially over. The work day has officially begun. Life has officially taken over. But. For a brief moment in time, I bore witness to the morning. And I was humbled by it's wit.