Condition; Fog and Hot Nude Pearl

I slept soundly for a change. I woke at 6:45 at the cat's command to provide breakfast. My lower respiratory system seems clearer. And that's as far as I'll go at this point.

Carl Sandburg says in "Fog":

"The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on."

Every morning, I've been up somewhere between 5 to 7 dealing with the cats. And when dawn finally arrives it's not in "russet mantle clad."

There are three windows in the living room looking east. My couch sits perpendicularly and slightly back from the southernmost of these. In the window hangs a piece of stained glass that leaves only about six inches between it and the window frame. So when I look out, I'm seeing the world through a very confined space.

As I've gazed out through my rectangle of glass, the sky during the last few foggy mornings has been a dull grayish white. And some elusive literary connection has come and gone through my synapses until morning when the phrase "hot nude pearl" struck me. Which I recognized as part of the opening paragraph of Lawrence Durrell's "Justine," the first book in his great "Alexandria Quartet."

"The sea is high again toady, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter, you can feel the inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes ..."

PAX!