Today

TODAY There are days when you wake up and realize that the quality of light is as bright as you will see all day, and there are days when, no matter what the level of light, you are cruising through the countryside at seventy miles per hour, the January sun a pulsating pearl of this frigid white light on a frozen lake basin in a landscape of snow, or on a mid-summer morning a golden-red glow through the heavy wet leaves in a dissipating fog full of birdsong and breeze, Wadada Leo Smith’s “Blue Mountain Sun Drummer” or the Derek Trucks Band careening through your veins with that throbbing syncopation that says “Today can be done, my man, and not only done, but done in such a way that, at the end of the day, you’ll deserve some dark chocolate, some old vine zinfandel, hot tea with dark honey, conversation with a good woman, a confirmation that you did it and that, damn it, you’ll do it again!”