Dawn

I woke up at 5am on the couch; cricked neck, a sore back. The fire was out, one of the logs had even fallen out. I tossed it back in.

The last thing I remember was Big Brother Adults only. A couple joints and the guys naked in the shower. 

I did the maths, well, at least I'd had eight hours sleep.

Joel, my mate from London, was on-line, on msn.

Hello, hello, he said.

You know like that annoying late night plant sale ad. “Let’s all get bare rooted.” 

That ad doesn’t translate very well, as getting rooted is very much an Australian expression. The Americans and the Canadians have no idea what we were talking about. Funny hearing them say it after we explained the meaning of ‘getting a root’ to them on the Greek Islands. There were these guys asking for ‘a root’ all over the place.

The ad was annoying, not Joel. We chatted until dawn appeared beyond windows. I’ve always joked that Dawn was always a fat girl in a tight dress, I chuckled to myself at the thought. Joel's in love and off to Paris to follow his heart. Some blonde-haired, blue-eyed German guy he’d no doubt met doing hampers for the poor, or attending to gardens for the lonely, of sitting with the chronically shut in, or on some climate action initiative.

Then it was light beyond the windows, like magic, you know, the magic of a new day.

I made coffee and some jam toast and discovered that the log I'd tossed back into the hearth had sprung to life... fire, much to my joy. I got more wood and stacked the fire up. You know I hate to let a fire go out.

I sat bleary-eyed and watched the sun come up through my square paned metal French doors at the back of my house, it was fantastic. I wondered at the glory of the new day. I wondered why people had to make up religions to explain marvels, when there it was all in front of you. But then I reminded myself that was the basis of religion, with 2000 year old illiterate goat herders trying to explain the world around them as they saw it. Why the sun came up? Why the seasons changed? Why the plants grew? That’s how they understood and told the stories of their lives. It was just the stupidity of the people who came after them that elevated it into something holy.

Holy shit, I thought.

I pushed back into my comfy chair and sipped my coffee. I ate the rest of my jam toast, after which I had sticky fingers. I absentmindedly looked around for a cloth on which to wipe them.

I wondered what I might do for the rest of the day?

I didn’t even want to move from my chair, let alone achieve something constructive. Nyr? What's the point.

Some of us just aren't cut out for 9 to 5, as my mate Brad likes to say. I chuckled to myself. I wondered how all the office surfs were feeling as I glanced at my watch to see it was 8am. I wondered how peak hour was working out for everyone?

8am used to be a great time to go to bed, you know, if you were really living, another one of Brad’s truisms. That’s what Joel and Brad and I used to do in our twenties? It’s interesting how your life changes. Joel is in London. Brad is in New York. And I’m getting up instead of going to bed. The day was ahead of me which was kind of nice. Anything I wanted to do, I told myself.