January 14th.
Friday.
I read a piece by Suzie Grant, she of ALTERNATIVE AGEING fame, research has revealed that to reset your circadian rhythm, reset your sleeping pattern, and all sorts of other stuff, sunrise is your best friend.
So even though I didn’t climb into bed until 2.00 I set my alarm for 7.00
I learnt that Dawn is not Sunrise.
Dawn – today – was at 7.19
Sunrise was at 7.56
I put on a pair of tracky bottoms, a pair of trainers, a hoodie and a puffy gilet. It was 7.30. I set my telephone alarm for 7.56 and set off down the road. Dawn was tickling the horizon. Down the hill I went, frosty leaves crunched under foot. Round the bend. I had seven minutes before sunrise. So I walked down a field and up the avenue towards my tree. The trunk of the tree and my fingers were fucking freezing. I had a hug and I swear the tree said ‘Well done love.’ Round the farm to the fence and back again. The farmer had already started up his tractor. I nearly asked him whether he was up at sunrise everyday but decided not to bother. He is a miserable man, the kind of individual who won’t give you your ball back and closes off walkways with little green signs that don’t but seem to say, “Up your’s, ‘commoners'”. So I walked past him and tiptoed over the mud.
Then at 7.56 precisely my alarm went off – it’s set to a harp sound, like Mrs. Dales Dairy – and that bloody great big ball of fire popped up out of the East and I said an old Runic prayer;
‘You who are the source of all power.
Whose rays illuminate the world.
Illuminate also my heart
So it may do your work.
When I arrived home I put a CD on to meditate to a geezer I call Pak Choy. A series of exercises from hip rolling to eye rolling. Then an intense meditation to heal the earth, then more rock’n’rolling.
Now, doing early morning rising once is great, doing it twice will be even better, but keeping it going will be miraculous. If I can get up at dawn, walk into the sunrise and fall asleep 12 hours later at a normal time, who knows, I may reclaim all of my energy.
It’s now 10.15. I’m off to take the dawter to the station, then load my car with clean blankets, a forest of jute bags and my lipsticks. I had it cleaned yesterday by a team of Romanians, who smile as they haggle a price. Thoroughness cost me £20, but the flirting was worth way more. Shit, am I being un-PC? Still, their sunny disposition bought me polished seats. I can see through the back window, the body work is shiny and, after the old git has sandpapered both wings and spray painted them, my car will look as good as newish.
Today Novak Djokovic may well be chucked out of Australia, Boris is staying behind closed doors, Susan Grey the beleaguered civil servant will set about looking at Boris’s behaviour, I’m into the attic starting a new project whilst I wait for my South African writing partner to get back to me.
The old git is priming the stove, the cat is shouting at us, and the sun is still up. Sunset is at 16:20 whilst Dusk is at 16:58.
Sunrise sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laiden with happiness and tears
Only an old jew, like myself, could have written those lyrics. A Rabbinical turn of phrase wouldn’t you say, although a Taoist monk could have said it, or a Swami, or an Australian Aboriginal, or a Member of the Oglala Sioux.
We all of us are aware of the coming and going of tears and happiness and that life passes in the click of a finger; that putting up with reprehensible behaviour puts all of us on red alert and that if we spare those entitled pricks any kind of pain we will all end up in the dustbin…..