Coffee and crossword -- not entirely bad in the light of dawn

"Let every man in mankind's frailty consider his last day; and let none presume on his good fortune until he find life, at his death, a memory without pain."

- Sophocles

It happens to me upon awakening. My eyes are still closed, but an increasingly irritating restlessness, like an ant in the swimsuit, has invaded my slumber and driven the remaining vestiges of sleep from me. Wham! I am conscious. I am in my day.

I don't necessarily want to be awake, but I am. It's five-thirty in the morning. Even before I glance at the bedside clock, I know it's five-thirty. It has been five-thirty for a few years now. Before that it was six-thirty for a period of time, and that seemed so early then. Sometimes I long for the implied decadence and slothfulness of six-thirty.

There's nothing much to do in the real world at five-thirty. No longer do I lie in bed in the vain hope sleep will return. I know it won't. The longer I lie there, the more restless I become, so, slightly grudgingly, and taking care not to awaken my wife, I get up and switch on the coffee maker. By now I’m resigned to the reality that even if I'm on vacation, or if I were retired, or because it's Saturday, or whatever, I'm going to sleep no more.

Anyway, the ridiculously old but remarkably fit cat wants to be fed, and Wendy likes to get up to freshly-brewed coffee, so I may as well oblige.

In truth, I like this time of day. It gives me an opportunity to do a personal reconnaissance of what might be in store, where I am in relation to the forthcoming hours, not to mention the universe, where I'm going, where I've been, and my continuous ponderings about whether there is a divinity that shapes our ends, or if it's all random.

The older I get the more I like to believe that old divinity is there. The idea of a prime mover somehow gives my journey thus far more meaning. Maybe there was a method to all the madness, and maybe one of these mornings it will all fall into place. It could happen. Five-thirty gives me ample time to ponder metaphysical imponderables.

It's blessedly quiet in the house, and there is little traffic on the street at that time. If it's early summer, then it is light. In winter I arise to blackness. In some ways I prefer the blackness -- it puts a protective shroud over the outer world.

I hear the morning paper being flung against the front door. At the same time the coffee has finished brewing. It's 'showtime!' I pour a coffee and glance at the front page. No new wars, just the same old ones. No terrorists have struck overnight. Yet another teen has wiped himself out in a now shredded import vehicle, which was either stolen or purchased for him by sstupid and frightened parents. I move on to tales of oily politicians, corrupt and unchanging bureaucracies, cowardly judges, ranting editorial writers, unnerving stock market figures, 'non-entertainment' tales of unknown (to me) bimbos and bozos who make seven-figure incomes while exhibiting execrable lifestyle taste and no discernable talent, and am grateful for the comics pages, though I still miss Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side.

Perhaps such early awakening manifests itself as we get older to remind us ofour mortality. I think about such things -- sometimes -- after the paper has been read. You know, in case we have forgotten we have one day less to live, we are being exhorted to get out there and carpe diem in every way we can. "There's sleep enough in the grave," goes the old saw. I hate to admit there's wisdom to the adage. The grim, grayness of pre-dawn says we should be conscious of the fact that no matter what escapes from reality we might want to apply, we are awake, we are still alive, we are who we are, we are the age we are, our health is what it is, we live at the relative level of affluence or poverty that we do, and in all of these things there’s little we can do to change it.

So, might as well feed the cat, have another coffee and cursorily peruse the New York Times crossword, which is easier if it’s a Monday or Tuesday, by the way.