MORNING WOULD

"in spring it is the dawn," begins the pillow book, "[it is the dawn] that is most beautiful. as the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them." it goes without saying that sei shōnagon, the court lady who served empress teishi in heian japan at the turn of the eleventh century, had never seen the light of dawn creep over the hills of lisbon. she wouldn't have known lisbon at all -- but then neither had i apart from having heard more than once that it was a city in which to lose oneself. and so i did. and i started early, so to speak, as the light of dawn was creeping over the hills, dying them a faint red as they were, at the same time, trailed over by wisps of purplish cloud making their way toward the other side of the water. the night bus is always a risky proposition as the promise of saving time by sleeping en route to the bus' destination is, at best (usually -- which is to say if you're lucky), only restlessly fulfilled, and the afternoon hours of the following day are spent wondering whether it would have been better to have wasted the afternoon of the day before in transit instead of having to agonize over rallying the strength to stay awake and enjoy the one in front of you. and then enjoying the night might mean a next morning even more vicious than the previous afternoon. but in spring (and for sei shōnagon, whose writing was done under the influence of the lunar calendar, the spring meant february), it is the dawn that is the most beautiful; and even if the weather isn't permitting of literary analogies, the night bus is, for all of its potential hazards, always the perfect way to meet the city at dawn. and even if on through successive encounters she turns out to be not exactly what you'd thought her to be at first, the city at dawn is yours for falling in love (with), with all the naivety of wanting just to fall in love. and in the dim light of dawn, with hardly anyone else on the streets to interrupt the playing out of her fantasy, she accepts you touching her, clumsily, perhaps, but well intentioned -- excited but respectful -- before any of her better acquaintances (or the internet) have a chance to fill you in on her history and her reputation and perhaps thereby ruin the better image of herself she'd helped you create in your shared romantic imagination. that image, of course (of course), could get better too in time, but for the time it's nice to imagine. to fall in love with...anything. and although the hilled streets that every so often (but each time sooner than you would have expected) open onto narrow vistas of the water, and the streetcars, and the big, red suspension bridge that leads over onto the wooded hills across the water are all reminiscent of past romances (not to mention the open arms of the redeemer), i try to keep myself to the possibilities of the moment. and that moment is silent in the glow of the creeping light until the silence is gradually broken as i approach someone playing his guitar at the edge of a ridge that drops from one neighborhood onto another. then the guitar player too falls into silence as i accidentally kick an empty glass bottle over the paving stones of the park and off the ridge. then a group of three passes behind me and in front of the art nouveau lampposts outside the gate of the whatever building and i take that as a cue to take myself down another hill. and the two policemen at the top of the hill above the tiered staircase where i stop to take a picture of my shadow in the faint red light think i'm suspicious. i would like, anyway, to think that they think i'm suspicious. i would be anything for love. but the light is getting stronger and there are more people on the streets, one of which i take and it takes me in front of the four seasons, and i wonder if i'm not too poor to be going for a love like this one, or maybe, rather, that my love is cheap. there is, however, enough exuberance left in the morning -- or just enough, rather -- to keep hope alive. before the gathering crowds on the streets remind you that you've only dismissed the pain in your feet for the aching in your knees and that your face has been all night on the night bus and wouldn't stand for loving anywhere, before your image of that very real love -- even if it was only imagined -- is ruined (and it's possible that it will be ruined by you, that you are ruining it), you need to immortalize it in correspondence. before it's ruined, you can tell them that it was beautiful to be in love with the city before it was ruined. there are places selling cards and places to sit, and inside you can't see that the hills are completely illuminated, but you can imagine it, and the contrast of the full morning light with the faint red and the purple wisps of your clumsy good intentions fills the morning now completely with the exuberance of a fond -- if clusmy (but well intentioned) -- longing. a dawn like that one could only give way to a morning like this one, even if its exuberance doesn't stand a chance against the afternoon. and this kind of morning would -- it can't but not, because this is your love story -- be conducive to grand, sweeping lines. they'll believe them if you do, even if you won't later believe them yourself. but this morning would. and in spring, i hear myself say it knowing that i might wish the line annihilated later along with my exuberance. in spring...cruzes credo...in spring it is the dawn.