“Lauds” (A Morning Portrait; the Webb House, Hillsborough, NC)

I may be the only person I know who gets up every morning at 4 a.m. without immediately having to milk something (either cows or one’s self, depending on whether one’s a dairyman or a mother with a newborn in the house).

This is, actually, my favorite time of the day. If nothing else, the hours between 4 and dawn are the only ones during which it’s quiet enough around this old joint to listen attentively to serious music.  This is a portrait of my “view” every morning, while I sit, have my coffee, and wonder when my comparatively lazy and determinedly pagan dogs will choose to get up.  The oddness of the composition results from its being the view I have as I sit on the kitchen steps, looking across the courtyard at the east window of the old smokehouse, which in turn gives a view onto the wing’s west window.  All in all, it’s a bit hall-of-mirrors-ish, which is probably appropriate.

“Lauds” is, of course, the morning office….just the sort of thing I can pay attention to, since I don’t, for various reasons, have to pack kids off to school or fix my hair so that I can drive to work each day.