The blues

This morning I wake up with Elton John in my head.

“Don't wish it away
Don't look at it like it's forever
Between you and me
I could honestly say
That things can only get better

And while I'm away
Dust out the demons inside
And it won't be long
Before you and me run
To the place in our hearts
Where we hide

And I guess that's why
They call it the blues...”

Beside me the love of my life is curled up in the blankets. As I stir she murmurs and snuggles in tighter. Elton John is still singing, and I recall the dream I just had. In my dream Madonna is dancing with Queen Latifah. They spin each other round and round. They are so in love. I look at LL sleeping beside me and a wave of incomprehensible gratitude washes over me. We are spinning each other round and round, so in love.

Over coffee LL finishes up her charting from the previous day’s clinic and I read Science News. A new analysis of 13.7-billion-year-old light, the cosmic microwave background, has provided further evidence for the theory that the universe began as an infinitesimally small dot and expanded “from subatomic scale to the size of a soccer ball” in 1/10exp33 seconds (and on to at least 10 light-years in size by 1 second). Researchers at Stanford have bypassed stem cells and transformed skin fibroblast cells into working neurons using virus-inserted genes. A compound similar to the active ingredient in marijuana might interfere with the proton channel which affords sperm cells their motility. Paleobiologists have identified the feather colors of a tiny flightless dinosaur that lived 151 million years ago.

My subscription to the magazine had lapsed and only recently been renewed, and I devour the information excitedly. As I marvel aloud over the idea that all observable matter—dinosaur fossils, marijuana leaves, stem cells, Queen Latifah, our solar system—was once compressed into a space smaller than the period at the end of a sentence, LL finishes her granola and yogurt and heads upstairs to take a shower.

In another moment she is out the door, and I am alone. The house is quiet.

“Time on my hands
Could be time spent with you...”

Suddenly the painting, the emails, the reading I had so looked forward to, seem so empty. I sit down and get out my watercolors and then stop. I do a quick search on the internet and pull up what I am looking for.

“But more than ever I simply love you
More than I love life itself...”

In a moment I will resume my day. Soon enough the sun will again shine. For now, though, I quietly savor the gray Seattle morning.