At six thirty o’clock Henry wakes me with a lick. Clocks may be off but not Henry. Having no idea what time is, he knows the time (which raises the question, if that’s your shtick, what is time?). Duck his lick and he persists, refusing to take groan for an answer. It’s not that he’s pitiless or even inconsiderate, it’s just that it’s time, I know it, he knows it, and if I don’t like it, well, tough. He does his bit playing puppy by our script – more or less, when he feels like it – our duty is to play proprietor by his. Come six-thirty he needs to go, no kidding, ignore him at your peril. Do you want to be on your knees griping, growling, sopping paper towels, or back in the sack for your happy lagniappe nap lickety-split. Well then!

Offloading my legs like logs from a barge, I feel with phantom feet for slippers gone missing in the night. They haven’t gone far – Henry sleeps sounder leaning his chin on them, for some reason – but who knows where in the dark? They could be anywhere, damm --, I mean, darn it. Logic suggests switching on the bed lamp to facilitate recovery – they can’t be that far! – but since when has logic bested lethargy at this hour? Difficulty of trial magnifies the glory of its accomplishment, as Hercules or any card-carrying hero will attest. What a guy I am to interrupt my rest to permit Henry to drain his channels before sunrise! Henry’s accelerating licks recall the practical benefits of such valorous self-sacrifice: shake a leg or else!

So off we sally, Quixote and Sancho, hero cop and sidekick, one prancing, one shuffling, into the opalescent translucence, where we await hiss and plop, though not for long. (The hiss puts me in mind of my own requirements.) Then back to bed, ahhh, though not for sleep, which has flown – for fervor, rather, regarding what topic to tackle when we irrecoverably wake sixty minutes hence.

You’d be surprised how many subjects are excluded from missive eligibility. Jane nudges me to write something new, unexpected, which triggers a doleful review of how little I know – I, you, anybody. To gas about over one Negroni too many, sure, I, you, anybody can hold forth, eliciting nods, but to commit one’s commentary to print, where, if its asinine, it’s sure to endure? What standing have I, as lawyers say, to address any -ology? The designation “amateur,” once laudatory, is now ignominious, while “professional,” once opprobrious, is now swell. Knowing a little of this and a little of that amounts these days to a lot of nothing. My only expertise is me, a field too ploughed, and now, I guess, Henry, to whose cogitations I control access. I’m spent, a stubbed butt (remember them?). Stick a fork in him, he’s done.

Only that can’t be! Scribo ergo sum. Untether us and away you’ll drift leaving me a dinghy mid-ocean, no compass, no supplies. “The habit of expression,” observed Henry Adams, “leads to the search for something to express.” So dig, dude, in your cerebellum, since that’s your only meadow, for something, anything, to beguile the dawn.

Henry’s matutinal habit perhaps – give it shot, why not, dust off the dirt of dailiness and see what tendrils tense toward the light.

Words are a pack of dogs snuffling for scents (and sense): unleash them into the wilds of ignorance. Wonder is everywhere available at the trifling cost of inquiry. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is no policy: always ask and always tell.