In the light of day, the map unfolds and the creases are smoothed by God's heavy dark hand. I walk the wrinkles and smudges to my job, to work. All morning I voyeur, dream and sometimes work. More coffee! More coffee!

A few weeks ago I woke up very early. I walked downstairs and sat on my couch. I wrapped myself in a smelly blanket and sat on my back porch and ate an apple. It was then I realized God is an early riser and must go to bed early. The evidence of majesty and heaven was so clear. God had been up for hours before I was that morning, setting up the entire layout of my world, like a benevolent craftsman tinkering with a train set. The tri-colored sky (black then pink then blue) was so striking I was lulled into a lazy calm. The sun rose and quickly burned off this mist, this feeling, but all through the day I could not help but think that morning while the entire world lay untouched and covered, I was part of the landscape God had created. I was licked by the slick brush of the morning.

Moments like these calm me and make me feel not alone, but blended with the fabric of a divine plan. Though I am isolated now, have cut ties from a woman who keeps such elegance and grace, I feel I have not lost her. She lives in the same town and when I have mornings and moments like that, it is as if we are bedfellows.

I think about her almost constantly. I want her to be near me, I want to gaze at her. So through the chilly cool of a gray morning, I'll tug my jacket around me that much tighter, pump my bicycle that much harder and make believe the stinging tears are from the wind whipping my eyes.