Blue Monday

I woke up on Monday a little after dawn on my first day in my new home on the hillside. The midnight blue veil on the stars turned to violet, then red -- giving time for the stars to disappear -- and then the veil was gone and the sky was azure, in a sparkling spring day.

Below the sparkling sky was the Atlantic Ocean in the distance, its millions of gallons of water a deep, warm sea blue, and calm. No trace of the many tragedies that sea covers could be seen there... not even the bones of many of the friends and family of my African ancestors who perished in the slave trade.

The Africans who made it -- made it through the journey, through slavery, and into freedom gave us the music called “the blues,” sadness risen to a profundity as deep as the sea, broad as the sky, and transcendent even of the sadness from which it came, for to me, all the blues are is just joy come up out of sadness, like dawn out of darkness.

I turned on B.B. King and put my Bluetooth in my ear, walked barefooted through the bluegrass on my lawn, enjoyed the forget-me-nots and blue hyacinths in my garden, stretched myself under the blue sky, and smelled the fresh air coming off the deep blue sea. It's Blue Monday, in my new home. Let the good times roll.