Hello World

The air is as fresh as the first dawn. Everything looks bright and beautiful, and remarkably... fresh.

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the world

It feels a bit like that today with the lifting of the haze.

~ | ~

On the first morning
C. S. Lewis describes the creation of the world, or rather Narnia, in The Magician's Nephew. The stars sing and the air is fresh. If Plato is correct and that there is a true and perfect form of everything we perceive, then I imagine the creation of the world to be populated by these true forms -- the truest sunset, the perfect flower, the quintessential morning dew... It will be so full that you keep your eyes half shut because of the dizzy, painful pleasure.

~ | ~

On blackbirds
I was having breakfast in the canteen today when I saw two crows fighting with each other. Crows are very intelligent. When the folks from the pest company arrive in their vans to shoot them down, the crows recognize the vans and start squawking to each other that the vans have come. Then they fly just above the range of their guns, taunting the pest controllers with their squawks.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more."

~ Edgar Allan Poe