Making flirty eyes with the Universe -- my Tennessee backwoods Perseid prayer
Good zero mid-day thirty, all y'all. Long time, no type.
Wrote this up after spending my early morning night with the cosmos. Hope you enjoy.
Peace out. Y'all come.
FBN
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"I've overslept!" said I to me as my bare feet touched the bedroom floor. And yes I had, but only for a minute or two (nine of them, to be exact).
So at 2:39 am, I brewed my hot quart and rolled a wee bit o' the White, put on boots, short pants and t-shirt and a gifted hoodie for the first time in a while.
Jumped in the truck and headed south toward the hillock with the dozen miles view. Drove there with my brights on to see and dodge the deer. But despite that bright light, I saw my first flash of the night straight ahead, a long bright streak between the trees, the Universe skipping pebbles to the ground, pebbles that started up and ended down.
I'd hoped that my overlook would be empty but was happy nonetheless to see first one, then two, then a dozen cars already there. I pulled in my reserved spot and chatted some with those whose nighttime pupils had just been assaulted by me. Three young folk -- temporary escapees from the Franklkn fortress -- a latter day Mod Squad, laughing around their whispers, in a recognizably good mood.
So I crawled up on my pickup's hood and leaned back facing north, sparked up my single small White treat and lay there in the dark, letting my eyes get accustomed to a world in black and white
Dark velvet and crystal pinpricks in the nighttime blanket of the world, interspersed with fast moving fireflies that kept our hillock entertained. But our quick breaths and exclamations were uttered as in church. So we could settle -- everyone of us -- into our own private worship of what we were seeing unfold.
My own prayers were thankful not so much for the meteors, though their come-on had got me there. No, my thanks were for ... all of it, the cosmos and the faint-mooing cow who kept her own herd restless in the distance, in the dark. Most of all, I was thankful for my only duty, to be a designated receiver, equipped with a nice mix of senses to catch what the Goddess was throwing all across Her midnight palette. She just kept throwing, gently and with soft motion, skipping pebbles on Her earth's airy mantle, knowing some of Her children would smile.
And I lay there some more, and had a new thought, one that could not have come anywhere or any time else. I realized that I was looking at a piece of my land that I had never seen before, the part of it that extends upward and reaches from here to ... There. Smiling with this newfound foothold, with the knowledge that following one of the seven good directions would always get me there.
Around 4:20, the Mod Squad began to get restless and started folding their kit for the night. And the tall Black young man (perhaps emboldened by the earlier scent of my White-ness) leaned for a minute against the Mustang's trunk that his friend's Daddy's money had bought and whispered over at me. "With all respect, Older Man, as we get ready to leave, can you give us one piece of wisdom to carry us forward from here."
And I chuckled and said "One piece of advice? Well, that may not be easy. It's easier to, instead, give you two.
"The first is the most simple, simple as three words can be. But it took me only six decades to learn that they also applied to me. Those three words -- please try to remember and to always apply them somehow. Those three words -- best repeated from here to forever -- those three words are
"'Be.Here.Now.'
"The second is a bit more wordy, but it says everything I've had to learn to be happy and to be settled into the only life I've earned. Perhaps you already know those words, they come from "Dharma Bums". (No lights came on in their eyes) so I said " ... written by my own pope, Jack Kerouac (Still, no one was home). Well anyway, you'll find my own Sermon on the Mount if you'll Google the first phrase. It starts
"'Get yourself a hut house ...'"
As they closed their car doors and began to pull away, I could hear their quiet recitations 'Get yourself ... get yourself ....' until I could hear them no more. Three multicolored young meteors, moving back out in the dark.
Then it was just me and Thee left on that hill for the hour -- full of finally silent minutes -- that preceded the coming of dawn. And with the awakening of another best day on earth, I realized some final else. That each day the Sun brings me more than just its own light. It returns to me the colors that each day help me paint my own now blessed view of the World, the colors She now shares with me in all their glory, now that She's sure I'm finally ready, here and now, to see.
I spent the early morning night alone, with You and others. Thankful for the good company that now comes bundled with all three. Thankful for the wondrous early morning hours gifts for those of us who got up, then settled down enough to see, whether you were John A on Annapurna, Nick H in Indonesia, or Carl and Johanne high on your llano on the Taos County line.
We all received a rare predawn gift of fast moving, unearthly firespecks, tiny little sparkles from the corner of Her eyes. And with a wink, She woke us up and whispered once again "Now don't forget. No matter where we go, there we are. Right where we're supposed to be."
Yes I spent the early morning night alone with You and (three hopefully young) others. And for this now graying Jolly Blue Giant, it made all the difference to me.
Now (at long last) back to the berries.
And to giving thanks for You.
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Postscript: For those of you who don't know it, here's my own Sermon on the Mount:
"Get yourself a hut house not too far from town, live cheap, go ball in the bars once in awhile, write and rumble in the hills and learn how to saw boards and talk to grandmas you damn fool, carry loads of wood for them, clap your hands at shrines, get supernatural favors, take flower-arrangement lessons and grow chrysanthemums by the door, and get married for krissakes, get a friendly smart sensitive human-being gal who don't give a shit for martinis every night and all that dumb white shit in the kitchen."
"Oh", says Alvah, sitting up glad. "And what else?"
"Think of barnswallows and nighthawks filling the fields."
Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac
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Thanks, I needed that. 
