Instructions for a very particular moment of laughter

This can happen to you if you want it. Wake up before the dawn refreshed, despite a lack of sleep and happy because of the love of another. Let the last vivid, funny, and mysterious dream keep its clarity and write itself down in your memory. Toss on your clothes and head out into the darkness. (Do not take a coat. It is warmer than you think.) The moisture will hang impossibly thick in the air, like an infinity of membranes each making up their own water reality. Let the dream persist. Let it tickle your fancy. Take a slightly different route than you normally do; one that makes the morning quieter. As you come up the hill you will hear a convocation of ducks heckling two large geese for being too loud and a heron for not saying a thing. And then, in a moment I can only describe as pure delight, unknowingly surprise a badelynge of ducks. In a start they will take flight all beating their wings suddenly and simultaneously, surprising you in return, before they settle back down mid pond in a cacophony of quacks and splashing. This is where you laugh; full and nervously. Laugh as if you are part of something that depends on attitude, luck, and timing. Laugh as if laughter praises the birds and the fog and dreams and love and the universe and your self. Laugh, but don’t stop walking. There is still more to see.