On Euphoria and Loathing at the Break of Dawn

By Tim Clark — HEAD ABOVE WATER

Photographers call the hour right after sunrise and right before sunset the magic hour. I don’t know about that, but, dawn is my time. I wake before anybody else and spend some time alone. Just me, a cup of coffee and some scattered thoughts. Even my demons are more manageable, almost pleasant. Morning has some powerful magic.

At some point, I don’t know when, I metamorphosed from what I considered a night owl into a morning person. It might have been the Pavlovian training administered by our alarm clock. Alarm clocks are a creeping, invasive species of behavior modifying electronic creatures. They are, I’m convinced, the vanguard of the machine revolution. After so many days of being jarred from sleep at 4:45am by the “soothing sounds of modern jazz” or whatever station the stupid thing is dialed into I am powerless to resist.

Of course, stations change format so often I don’t know what will wake me tomorrow. And I am too afraid to change it. If I screw around with the wrong dial I might never get it working right again. It might start going off at 2:00 in the morning. So, I suffer through painful seconds of the jovial conversations of morning DJs, or music I would never choose on my own, because the alarm clock is in control. You see, I am already at their mercy.