The air is different

The air is different in the evening. I know this from my twice daily walks with the dogs. The air at 5:30 am is very different from the air at 7:00 at night.

That air that I breathe in during the evening walks is heavy and full. It is filled with layers of scents like a spice rack. The fragrance from the flowers and plants that has been released in the heat of the day mingles with the whiffs of kitchens and grills: the lavender and the pine with the steaks and stews. It is like an incense that slightly tickles the nose.

In the evening it feels as if the air is laden with the thoughts and feelings experienced by those who unconsciously inhale and then exhale into the world the joys, the worries, the introspections, the anxieties, the gladness, and the thousand other feelings that are felt during the day. It is saturated with coffee shop conversations and quiet meditations, with heated discussions and loving interludes, with sirens and children’s laughter punctuated with the sounds of the cicadas and the horns of cars.

The early morning air is empty. It has had time during the night to release the absorptions of the day. All the sounds, feelings, thoughts and activities of the day have dissipated leaving behind a bareness that allows the first sounds to filter in without distraction. The fragrance of the flowers is more sharp and poignant at 5:30 am. The first bird songs have more clarity when they aren’t mixed with the cacophony of cars and people. The early morning bees stand out in that emptiness.

The sun is not yet up in the August sky at 5:30 am as it is in June so there is still a milky, blurred quality to the day. Everything waits in suspension for the first sounds, first thoughts, first movements. The rabbits sit in the openness enjoying their breakfast of grass watered with the early dew. The birds start their first conversations from tree to tree and once again the layering begins.