The wrong side of the sunrise

Its common knowledge at this point, mornings and I don't get along.  My usual self is replaced with a clumsy, dim-witted, cranky imposter.  I put my clothes on backwards or inside out.  I spill coffee on myself and everything around me.  I misplace my keys that are in my hand.  I forget my lunch that I packed minutes earlier.  Sometimes it takes hours before I can function.  Sometimes the whole day goes by and the sun begins setting before the morning fog subsides and I feel human again.

To all the people who said I would get used to it and it would get easier, its been over a year, you were wrong, and here's a big "fuck you" to chew on:

FFFFFFFFFFF        UU                 UU              CCCCCC            KK                 KK
FF                            UU                 UU          CC                           KK              KK
FF                            UU                 UU         CC                            KK            KK
FFFFFFFFF             UU                UU       CC                               KKKKKKK
FFFFFFFFF             UU               UU        CC                               KKKKKKK
FF                             UU              UU         CC                              KK            KK
FF                               UU          UU           CC                              KK              KK
FF                                  UU      UU             CC                             KK                KK
FF                                     UUUU                  CCCCCCC             KK                   KK



                                                         UU                     UU
                                                         UU                     UU
                                                         UU                     UU
                                                         UU                     UU
                                                         UU                     UU
                                                           UU                 UU
                                                            UU               UU
                                                             UU              UU
                                                                UUUUUUU




There, I feel a little better.  :)

Early last week I got into my apartment complex's fitness room.  It's nothing fancy.... a few treadmills, a few ellipticals, and some random weight training equipment.  But its free and quiet.  I grabbed my 15 yr old iPod that was given to me by a best friend I used to have and that was filled with music by a business lady in a Florham Park, NJ hotel room nearly 8 years ago.  The iPod had been sitting silently in a box for about two years but I gave it a full charge and thought nothing of it.  I stepped onto a treadmill and pressed play and smiled as the first few notes started playing. 

The dusty memories started coming back slowly and stayed ghostly in the distance.  I suppose over the years the music files corrupted.  The vocals in the verses were no longer audible.  In some songs the vocals came back fully in the choruses and then slid out again during the verses.  In other songs only background vocals were there.  All of the songs were familiar but some of them took a while before I could remember them clearly.  This was my traveling on trains soundtrack.  This was my subways at 3 am heading back to Queens from Philadelphia music.  This was my "I have no idea what the hell I am doing with my life but I'm having the best time doing it" soundtrack.  It was the beautiful two years right around 2007-2009 that everything in my world was upside down but everything in my head was right where it needed to be. 

That was a very different life.  Very different.  I always had plenty of sleep but not nearly enough to eat.  I slept in my car, on trains, in business lady's hotel rooms, and occasionally on couches but I was never too sure where my next meal was coming from.  I liked it that way.  And I had a great job that I loved and a few solid friends that were there for me when I got tired of moving and just needed to sit still for a bit or talk to someone other than myself.  Or do laundry.

It was a very different life.

I live at the beach now.  I wake up everyday to palm trees and sand and the Atlantic Ocean.  Brown pelicans are my absolute favorite and I don't remember what regular non-salty air smells like. 

One day last week I peeled myself out of bed at twenty after 6 in the morning, before the sunrise.  Its all backwards.  I prefer my sunrises after impromptu late night road trips to see my favorite bridge in Delaware or after spending the night in a bar or a friend's garage 2 states away.  Sunrises look better while driving north over the Girard Point Bridge in light rain after having created an adventure out of an otherwise typical Tuesday night. 

I had an 8 am work meeting.  What a special kind of hell this is.  Three cups of coffee later the meeting finished up and I headed to a friends house.  We sat on the couch, put our feet up, and opened a few beers and eased into the day.  I'm still easing into that day and it's now nearly 10pm over a week later.  I can't get a hold on this routine.  Time and I are at war.  Its a war I have no delusions of winning, I'm just missing my tempo rubato movement.