Waiting for daybreak, I leant against a marble column to observe the golden-green Maxfield Parrish sky, although I was wearing rather more clothes than a figure in one of his paintings. I'm more twill-trousered Norman Rockwell Main Street interloper than Neo-classical sprite. No dainty pink toes dipped in a cool, calm lake for me, my heavy hobnail boots track muddy footprints all along the gleaming colonnade instead. Still, I saw this ivy-clad Greco-Roman villa advertised for rent in the Saturday Evening Post classifieds and thought "I'd like to get away from it and have some peace and quiet for a change." If only in my mind.
Someday soon, when the city skyline is crowded with luxury condominiums, a fee will be charged to watch the sunrise from a public balcony with stadium seating. There will be a gift shop with posters of parting clouds for sale, and an onsite cafe called The Crack O' Dawn. Perhaps they will even provide sightseeing tours of the dewdrops from a fleet of air-conditioned buses. Before too long, of course, even this state-sponsored sunrise will be obscured by mountains of uncollected plastic garbage.
Daybreak: to be woken with a whispered word of timeless truth, a brief aubade already fading into an indistinct echo as your eyes open, then completely forgotten amid the clamor of the daily grind. But I have a feeling morning's timeless truth is not so ineffably profound, after all. Merely a reminder to fetch a mop and bucket to wipe away those muddy footprints you left behind last night. They only lead back to the way you came in, not the direction you want to go. There is still time to exchange your dark suit and overcoat for a skimpy incandescent toga, although you might want to lose a little weight first.
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