L’ordre du jour pour le roi.- The day begins: let us begin to order for this day the business and the festivals of our merciful master who is still deigning to rest. His majesty has bad weather today: we shall be careful not to call it bad; we shall not speak of the weather – but we shall be a little more solemn about our business than would otherwise be necessary and a little more festive about the festivals.
Nietzsche, Die Froliche Wissenschaft
I wake up in the morning by eight o’clock. Even if I have been awake drinking the night before, I cannot sleep in past ten o’clock. This morning I am awake at half six. Today is my day off. I am going write. I have had five hours sleep but I cannot return to slumber. The work-in-progress awaits.
I get up and make a coffee. I use freshly ground, fair trade coffee beans from East Timor in a one-shot, stove-top coffee pot. If the hour is too early, before eight o’clock, I won’t use the grinder to spare my housemate sleeping in the room adjacent to the kitchen from the noise. I use my housemate’s coffee but this morning its frozen to the sides of the freezer.
There is coffee powder left in the grinder from the previous day. I roll a cigarette while the stale coffee is cooking on the stove. I feed the cats and smoke. My writing day is ready to begin.
I sit in front of the computer and pore over the headlines from the ABC website for an hour. Armed siege between a teenager and police in Perth. Climate change minister Penny Wong is getting hard about the carbon emissions bill that the Greens won’t pass and neither will the opposition.
I fiddle with the music on my computer. I re-discover Barry Adamson’s As Above So Below. I copy Stranger On A Sofa off my disc onto the computer. I wanted to copy The Necks too but the disc is missing when I open the cover. God knows where it is. I make a couple of playlists – “wednesday morning with a cigarette hungover” and “black and white keys” – with Barry, Beethoven, Tom Waits, Mike Patton, Masada and the music of Islam.
I surf the Net for Escher drawings. I found an old Escher calendar the other day and I thought a piece of his art would make for an innaresting desktop.
I’m nearly ready to start writing. I need another coffee (my housemate has gone to 
work – I grind a fresh batch of beans) and a cigarette. The sun is shining, the mid-morning is clear but clouds threaten the afternoon. I practise my bowing for an hour. I have a violin lesson this afternoon at four and I have to correct this downbow. My bow still trembles on the downstroke.
Now I am ready to write.
An unexpected text message arrives from a lover. Meet me at Ceres for a coffee.
Okay. I will.
