I wake, in darkness, a breath before the blood might have stained the sheets. My sleeping soul knows what my waking self overrides. I did not even know I had started bleeding. But I wake, in perfect timing.

In perfect timing, before sunrise, I still need rest but that will have to come in the form of a nap after noon. Let me revel in this life that owes allegiance to no alarm clock and has the freedom to choose sleep at leisure.

I am still on EST time apparently, after a grounding holiday season surrounded by the people I love in Chicago, Detroit, and my hometown/farmtown, Michigan. A monumental visit, certainly the first in my transient life that I have actually left the city I was in feeling completely fulfilled with quality time - an entirely new experience for me. Is this one of the tumultuous lessons Saturn's return brings as I navigate my 29th year? I feel it. How to be where I am, wherever I am. Grounding has nothing to do with being stationary.

Or everything to do with being stationary. Being able to hold two contradicting truths in my mind without rejecting either is another gift of Saturn's return. These are the big girl lessons no one sees from the surface.

Pacific Standard Time. In Hollywood now, green grass and pink stucco utterly contradicting the snow banks and frozen lakes I just left. Ironically, this empty apartment before sunrise still feels cold - remembering the Chicago winter wind, tearing eyes, hardening body, ripping skin, freezing moisture inside the lungs. I light the gas underneath the tea kettle and wait for a whistle while hustling clothes on this bleeding body, stuffing earphones in these groggy aural inputs and snatching a set of poi for a date on a dark rooftop.

On the dark rooftop we spin. On the dark rooftop we remember why we love our body. On the dark rooftop we look to the east and see the sky, too, rouse from slumber; Delta waves cycling to Alpha in visual light form. I am a good poi spinner. I know because I love the way it feels. Anyone who loves something this much is meant to do it. Love living. Love waking up. Meant to wake up. Every day, meant to wake. I'm good at waking up.

Beta light waves. To the east, between palm trees, a sliver of red peeks through in perfect timing. A seemingly simple event, this sun rising. This sun - the same sun that rose over my great-grandmother slipping through an open window back into her marriage bed, over ladies in corsets breaking ribs in the name of beauty, over women of healing herbs on parade to the countryside gallows, over mothers, since time unmemorable, stealing a peaceful moment of silence before the young ones stir - all touched by this sun. This sun now rising over a small town witch half asleep spinning poi bleeding red sipping tea.

And I stare, when the sun is on the horizon, I stare into the source itself. The spark, the gateway of creation. It is bright, but gentle, and eventually, the beautiful blinding red orb, like one of those posters, pops into three dimensions, reveling itself to me. The center of the source becomes invisible and the rays emitting, unseen seconds before, are a prism of color reaching out over all creation, even godless Hollywood. I am like the source. I am touched by the arms. I am made of light. Feed me life through this awareness. My breakfast, my breast; make me strong for one more day.

It has risen. My eyes instinctually focus. I see clearly - just a world, just a girl, just another day. I will drive a car. I will throw something away. I will take a nap if I so choose. The waking self overrides what the sleeping soul knows.

I woke up today.

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