Up at 5:00 am this morning, I looked back lovingly at my awful Grand-Canyon-like bed and sighed. It would be 40 hours until I saw a bed again. I then proceeded towards the kitchen, nailing my foot on the vacuum cleaner abandoned in the door way. Vacuum cleaners – who needs them, really? All I have to do is open the door and the sliding window at the same time to create a draft and all my dust returns to itself. Or the neighbor’s.

But I skipped coffee, still unable to focus sharply on anything smaller than the oven and unsure of my ability to handle Bialetti technology. I would get caffeine downtown. Getting dressed wasn’t so complicated because I’ve learned to execute my routine through the mists of the deepest early morning sleep. Once I figure which sock goes on which foot in order to avoid positioning the holes on the big toe – a wasteful and aggravating maneuver I’ve regretted many a time – the rest follows smoothly. Ok, I’ve only got one pair that’s this bad.

A glance at the outside thermometer to figure out if I could finally focus, a look at the mirror to make sure I was wearing pants, a frown at the open suitcase which by now should have been packed, a handful of dried apricots to get my hands sticky and avoid losing my bus pass, and I was out the door. I caught the first bus at the first stop, along with two or three other early birds and a raccoon. I don’t think they could focus much either.

I got off in front of Waves and went in for coffee. I had a couple of minutes to kill before it turned 6:00 am. There’s something degrading about arriving to work before 6:00; it’s like admitting being a slave, or having slept on the sidewalk. But at 6:01, it all changes. A new workday is born, there’s time and potential ahead and one feels smart by having beaten the crowds to their desk.

I like early morning. It’s a promising time. I wish English had an expression for it like Spanish does. La madrugada. It’s easy to get lost in thoughts, then.

So I sat down for a few minutes
in this town of men with big mouths and no guts, thinking that some things we plan, we sit and we invent and we plot and cook up; others are works of inspiration, of poetry; and me, if you can believe this, I closed my eyes, actually praying, not to God above but to you, waiting in your dress, in your dress of blue; saying, thank you girl, thank you girl, I’ll love you till the end of the world...*

* Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – crafted from (I’ll Love You) Till the End of the World