I should just not stay up late. I was up until sometime after 2 last night and still, when 7 am rolled around I jumped out of bed all panicky because my alarm didn't go off and I was sure, SURE, I was totally late for work and what would they think of me, not being able to get to work on time? Gah. It's July 4. National Holiday. No work. Which is why I stayed up late to begin with, thinking I would sleep in. I don't sleep in. Why can't I remember this about myself? I never have slept in. Problem is, I want to be a night owl. Night owls are ever so much cooler than morning people. Alas.

I do like being up in the early morning when I'm sure all the rest of the world is still sleeping and I've got the whole day before me. It's not the same being up very late. I feel pointless in the middle of the night. Plus in the morning coffee is the drink of choice, while the wee hours clamor for alcohol. The later it gets, the harder and crueler the drinks.

When I drove cross-country with Blythe and sfitz, I would rise, after nights spend carousing around a campfire and scant sleep on inevitably rocky ground, just before daybreak. Blythe and sfitz would emerge from the tent usually about 4 or 5 hours after me.

When I visit my parents I wake up at 5 am because both my mom and dad are early risers. I'll make coffee and gather up the dogs and whichever cats feel adventurous and set out with my mug and my smokes. My parents live in this great bit of Florida country�a near anachronism these days. They have 10 acres, nearly all of which they've left as is, uncleared. The roads surrounding their land are white sand. In the early morning, the pre-sun soaked morning, this bit of country is one of the loveliest spots on the planet.

What I love about Florida is how secret the place is�yeah, people have been bulldozing all the natural bits down for decades and fucking FUCKING Disney has attempted to destroy nearly all that is good about my homeland. But the land there is tricky�a trickster. Good at disguise and secretly cruel to the colonizers. Build a house on the beach, a hurricane will probably knock it down. Build a house further inland, someday in the not-too-distant future it may fall over because the land is really all swamp and clever cover-ups for sinkholes. Don't touch the spanish moss and don't prod the drift wood.

But if you let the land be what it is, and acknowledge that you are an alien in it, she may just let you in on a few of her secrets. The early mornings are especially kind.

From my darling Elizabeth Bishop who has already said everything I wish to say about anything:

After dark, the fireflies map the heavens in the marsh
until the moon rises.
Cold white, not bright, the moonlight is coarse-meshed,
and the careless, corrupt state is all black specks
too far apart, and ugly whites; the poorest
post-card of itself.
After dark, the pools seem to have slipped away.
The alligator, who has five distinct calls:
friendliness, love, mating, war, and a warning�
whimpers and speaks in the throat
of the Indian Princess.

������excerpted from "Florida"