Most mornings I wake up just before my alarm clock and find sunlight pouring through my window like thick, golden golden honey sliding down the side of a glass jar. Shaking sleep from my eyes, I breathe in the present though tempted to pick over the past like a pesty hangnail or circumnavigate a future that I cannot yet envision. Laying there on the world´s thickest mattress and in a room quickly filling with light and sound and microbiotic activity, I can´t keep from being here. Now.
In Spanish, there is no noun for The Dawn that I´ve encountered yet in my beginner's vocabulary. The verb, Amanecer is used as the sustantivo and means most literally "to dawn." To me, this shape shifting verb embodies a newfound sense of the Present that I experience very regularly here. I treasure waking each morning to a gentle and profound greeting from my host family: ¿Como amanecio? How did you ARISE?
Sometimes when I forget myself and try to guestimate the future, I wonder how I´ll answer that question two weeks from now, in two months...and then in two years. Then I catch myself wandering down paths I have not yet discovered in the Present and then rise from my bed to remind myself to appreciate the way sunlight kisses the window panes. How suddenly Light occupies a room and draws me out from under the covers to dance with her. And how, regardless of how yesterday treated me and the fears I hold for tomorrow, today I have the opportunity to Amanecer.
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