There is something about the smell of the air early in the morning, when the sun is molten gold and poured on everything. That fresh green breeze that moves through dew drops and the leaves and makes all the clichés come true. The squirrels are all chirping the songs that you love and birds all nod knowingly down from above. It even seems like there’s less garbage laying in the street. It’s fucking awesome. It is affirmation. Smiling faced communion with nature. It is the brink of possibility and the likelihood of failure but will to charge in anyway. The last deep breath before a long exhalation. Every one of us has stood in that place with the taste of greatness on our tongues and a halfway stupid smirk on our face. Senses filling up our defences to take on a cruel world and maybe even make a difference in some crude sense of the word. Those mornings come to Halifax over coffee and cigarettes. They come to Tehran over calls to prayer cast from minarets. They come to Montreal like the songs of Leonard Cohen. They come to Kinshasa like a river steadily flowing. Those mornings come to all of us at one time or another. A blinding flash of raw humanity, dangling the rest of your life like some ridiculous carrot just outside your door, leaving a vague and purple suggestion in your depth of perception that draws you forward step by step. You feel that fresh kiss on the tip of your nose and in the light of a thousand year old explosion it’s inside your bones. You know there’s no stopping. That this is a day that will not be forgotten. Where did the time go? When did it all go astray? Wait til the tide’s out, write in the sand what you want to say and let it fade away. Where do these lines go? When did this become ok? Wait til the light’s out write on the wall what you’ve got to say and let it fade away. Where do the rhymes go? When the songs have all been played? Wait til they die out, write it on their graves and let it fade away. We choose the rules we live by with the sun in our eyes and we use the tools that we can find to try to get by. Do or die. You only get one lifetime, etc. The proof is in the pale blue dot and the Crab Nebula. They can never take us all. We can’t let them make us fall. They can never break us all. We can’t let them make us crawl. So small against the universe, so large against the sky and lost here in the universe we’re always asking why. It’s perfectly normal and perfectly irregular. The proof is in the pale blue dot and the Crab Nebula. What do I know? It’s why we say to seize the day. Run with your heart out. With or without you it will be ok, it will be ok. Let go of the life rope. Try your best to be brave. If I don’t get out I did it all ‘cause I love you. It will be ok, it will be ok. I want you to try, though. There might be more than one way. Every day you can start out, do what you can - It will be ok, it will be ok. We never need to settle, we’re better than we let us be. Better than acceptable If we can get to plant the seeds. Molecular-level we’re all together not competitors. The proof is in the pale blue dot and the Crab Nebula.