Techniques

My life always comes back to waking up early, before sunset or even the first hint of daybreak.

The photographer was there before me, and after pleasantries the first thing I mentioned was how if someone saw a jet stream two hundred years ago, they would have thought it was a sign from God. Her reply? A humorous teardown of chemtrail conspiracy theorists.

Barbara’s smile, framed by her light hair, healed me with the power of the waters at Beaver Creek. She was Polish, and so I told her Chinese people thought of Chopin as an honorary Chinese. She got a kick out of that one! The stranger taught me how to take well-framed shots of the early morning past dawn.

We baited a bird (a kingfisher?) into serving as a model, all the while discussing how to further ingratiate myself with the woman I love. She sees in me a kindred spirit, she said, and wished she could have a son-in-law like me. Especially moving, given my current situation. She had her oldest daughter at my current age, and it has been twenty-eight years since then. Surely, the young woman who escaped communism with her childhood friend lover was the most beautiful person in the world.

I read her The Wind at Dawn (the poem, not the incomplete novel), quoted Oscar Wilde (“The moon is a virgin . . .”), and promised to see her there again. She left to get coffee, and I watched her drive away.