Got Cakes on the Griddle

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I'm up early, much earlier than usual.

Since getting off my last gig, my sleep cycle has yet to settle and I find myself sleeping to an embarrassingly late hour. I miss much of the day. I'm half-afraid to make daytime appointments. I've tried setting alarms and concocting elaborate schemes to get myself out of bed* sometime before mid-afternoon but to no avail.



Taking inspiration from Buckminster Fuller, I'm trying to reset to the diurnal habits by pushing my sleep deeper into the day with each passing cycle, hoping to stop when I come full circle to daytime dwelling.

As a result, I am wide awake, practically in the middle of my day at the sixth ante meridiem hour on a Monday. I'm waiting at the door of the coffee shop, staring at a still-black sky, watching as the cars along Highland Avenue slowly accumulate towards morning rush hour.

Here's the vendor filling the newspaper dispensers with today's issue. Here's the Sysco truck making its delivery of perishables. Here's a shivering bicyclist in a business suit, barely paying attention to the road. Here's a woman trying to sugar her coffee at the traffic light. Here's jogger after jogger after jogger, all just starting a day that's already ten hours old for me.

I've never been an early riser but often days I wish that I were. I very much like seeing the day break. I like witnessing those early hours, not fuzzy, with mist behind my pupils, aching for fresh coffee, as is the case when I'm made to wake myself. No, I like seeing the day start as one wide awake, seeing people rise, observing as darkened windows light up, beholding the growing dawn and the emerging day. I like pondering what all these people have ahead, all the things that might be afoot today: the deals struck, the lives saved, the loves lost, the discoveries made, the pains forgotten and all the things said.

Like the song says, "Watching the world wake up from history."



It's only in these rare, off-circadian moments that I get to witness this, though. I've always been the owl rather than the rooster. I've watched the streets empty and the last light switched off a hundred times for every occasion that I witnessed what I'm witnessing this morning. I wish I was built to do it more. I do so very much like waking the world.

So, with a gentle shake and a sweetened whisper, "Hey, wake up. You've got a big day ahead."



*As my roomate's girlfriend recently pointed out with some distress, I don't actually have a bed. Explaining the specifics of my sleeping arrangements are beyond the scope of this post.