An Accidental Sunrise

There are certain things that are better off not announced in neon. Bikini waxes. Sushi. Legal counseling.

There is a strip bar off the interstate in Jasper, Alabama. When I drive past, it reminds me of the Titti Twister in From Dusk till Dawn. I’ve always wanted to go in there and drink whiskey.

The best smell in the world is a can of tennis balls when you first open it. I could bury my face in a can of fresh tennis balls for an hour and huff like a pro. Like it was paint thinner, and I was some angst-ridden 13-year-old … bored outside a trailer in Montana.

My cat Moe has these impossibly soft, enormous, white feet. He has the kind of paws you want to put in your mouth. You know that weird urge. The way you have that urge to put really cute baby feet in your mouth? I have it. I know other people have it. But instead you just kiss the baby feet and never talk about the urge in public. It’s inappropriate to put a kid’s foot in your mouth, and putting a cat paw in your gob hole could kill a motherfucker.

These are the things I thought about while flying home. To Alabama. This is the way my brain works most of the time before noon. I wake up with ritual like every other human. Open eyes. Check phone for the exact time and text messages. Delight in unanswered text from certain someone. Or, despair that no one loved me enough to text me in the middle of the night. Shake off the either/or of cellular belonging and go floss. Brush. Wash face. Pee. And then I pad into the den hard on my heels (a habit that gives my roommate ‘the rage’ at times) and I press the little espresso bean button twice on our coffee-maker. Always two beans. Never one. Never three. You’d hate to see me on three beans. I’d hate to see me on three beans.

These are the thoughts I had while flying home because, like every other morning between the hours of 8 am and noon, I’d had only my two-bean sustenance and a lone glass of water. It’s one of my favorite times of day. My brain is jacked. Like a shiny, no-rust buzzsaw. Mexican Cartel quick. Liquid Peruvian-flake fast. It picks adjectives out of considered sentences and veers off with them into other, totally different thoughts. It’s like thinking in a bouncy castle.

This? This is an Accidental Sunrise. I took a photo of it yesterday morning when I accidentally woke up too early because I was nervous about missing my flight. This is the moment when the world reeks of fresh tennis balls … when God smiles down and pets us all on the head while we sleep … probably resisting the urge to put our tiny baby feet in his mouth. I love a good Accidental Sunrise.