Leaving in half an hour

to go to work. The music is picked and programmed into the system; reviews are written and Furball is playing with a pencil on the floor. The night drive is the part I like the least. Street lights are few and far between and most of those that are don't work consistently out in the country.

Drivers here are careless with their headlights, all mis-aligned and kept on bright for the most part. At least tonight it is not raining which adds to the challenges. Construction continues and holes merely filled with marl wash out becoming potholes reinforced with iron bars after a heavy rain. This time of year most of our rains are heavy, if brief. Clogged waterways bring quick flash mini floods that scour the road, remaking the landscape in an instant.

I may have had dinner a tad too early so I'll be ravenous by three. There is an eerie quality padding around a building after the witching hour, before the dawn, taking care of humdrum things like hunger or a full bladder, those things we humans must address whenever they arise.

I could be totally alone in the world, sealed into my studio with outside noise buffered; only the ringing in my ears and the squeak of the chair to punctuate my voice as I send it out to whom? I know there are listeners. They write to me. Yet in the dark, suspended from midnight till dawn I am not sure they are there. Still I talk to them because that is my purpose on Friday nights, Saturday mornings, to offer company, conversation and, of course, music to anyone who will listen.