Why am I awake? This question poses itself as my body lays in a comfortable position on the first available secluded space I found on the Oranjestad portion of Aruba’s west coast. The sand beneath me contours to nestle, hold and support my body. The warmth of my billions-grain fine quartz mattress speckled with broken shells and dry-rotted sea flora is delightful and tickling the small of my back, crevices about my ankles and the sweet spot most of us have between our earlobe and neck. The still midnight blue sky over wavy midnight blue water is nothing but pacifying. So, the sun isn’t out, the waves aren’t crashing, the sand crabs aren’t anxious. Why am I awake?
No answer…came while raising my hand to rub sleep out and sand into my eyes. However, I notice the color of my arm, after only a few hours exposure to southern Caribbean Sea sun, has darkened from its usual almondine brown to an earthen husky fudge blending nicely with its sky and seascape background. By now my superficial senses are awake enough to appreciate a soft song beginning from the left, over my shoulder and far behind me. The unidentified singing object is sitting in camouflage among the drooping limbs of a sparsely leaved tree whose name I do not know. It’s sister tree’s canopy of shade above me obscures the moon’s reflection of the sun onto the sand in a trippy psychedelic-type shadow-puppet nickelodeon. The clouds provide texture to the scene while moving in their own time for their own reasons before a wind too high and too cool for me to feel from this warm shore below.
Perhaps…full lotus, hands in prayer position will invite an answer. About ten minutes into this disciplined stillness amid an entrancing mantra-like oceanic ebb and flow, a cock crows. Only the second verse of the yard bird’s diurnal chant breaks my pose and concentration as it occurs to me, among this morning’s mysteries, my cock has not crowed. I might jump to my feet if it was not for the fact, I am on vacation. Perhaps, junior, like senior needs a break from it all and decided to sleep in too. Still, why am I awake?
Meanwhile, the Earth keeps spinning, bobbing, undulating, orbiting and shaking. I have no more answers now than when I awoke and started asking questions which do not need to be answered. Wanting to know was part of the obstruction. I’m awake because I’m awake. That’s it. That’s all. Waves washed away car horns, sirens and yelling. Humidity steamed away dry sidewalk putrescence. Salty air pushed out industrial toxins from my pores. I am awake because I have been awakened by nature’s call. I’m awake because my lungs crave this air and expand to capacity to capture it. I’m awake because my skin can breathe without heaving or gasping through clothes of any fabric. I’m awake because we are supposed to be “up with the Sun…” and here it comes.
The Sun. The answer to my question.
