my mornings

Put yourself in places of discomfort. Go where things are different. Surround yourself with strangers, and slowly, with whatever magic you may have, make them into friends. Wake up early on cold mornings, when getting out of your bed is like prying yourself from between the lock-jaw lips of an oyster. Cold that breath curls out of you like a reluctant ghost, and out of the necessity of waking up slowly before a bowl of steaming rice, your thoughts are simple.

Now that you've awoken, strap your guitar onto your back, sling your buyong--a tibetan fiddle--across your shoulder and walk up the cobbled streets, past the barking dogs, past the make-shift garbage dump, and the abandoned tiny temple, dwarfed by the others in the area. Walk up the hill, through the dry weary grass, and find the tree under which you'll sit, and sing, and play music both western and eastern for the dread-locked cows, the sparrows, the occasional curious passerby. All the while as the city steams below you, shivering loose from the icy night before.