I got up real early on Sunday - about 6.30am. It's partly the job, but mainly it's the need to kill some time. So, I was up with a mission, a barely subconscious one - one which kept stabbing at the forefront of my mind. Anyway, I didn't just mean to waste this time - I wanted to take a knife to it, maybe a machete - some weapon which would leave a few hours murdered, brutalised on the floor. And that's what I did.
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I switched on the computer and went for a shit. Left the door open, the whirring of the computer's weak innards as a soundtrack to the start of this pointless morning. I took a lazy walk to the kitchen area. I call it a kitchen area, but really it's just about the only place you could put the accoutrements needed for cooking in this box. So, it's not an 'area', but the place in my home which tolerates best the presence of a 'kitchen'. I wiped the previous evening's decaf from a mug, took two scoops of some cheap instant pseudo-mocha, stood, perhaps nodding my head to nothing a little, whilst the kettle bubbled to its conclusion. I filled the cup, stirred for longer than necessary, mildly transfixed on the chinking spoon in the cup. Beautiful noise - I didn't allow a single question to get in my head.
The coffee steamed next to the computer as I chugged through numerous, faceless internet pages, reading something, but nothing I'd remember an hour later - perfect Sunday morning sustenance.
Then, I sprawled on the sofa in the best position I could, my legs negotiating with the fixed cushions for a comfortable angle. Once I got my bones placed well I reached out for a book about the next location we're moving to. I read about beaches with names, but not pictures, and thought what a shame it is for a beach to have a name. I guessed I wanted to go to a beach called 'The Beach with no name'. Then realised that's more of a name than some exotic, syllabic monstrosity that I can't pronounce. The problem of naming things is once you start, there's no end - that bothered me a little, but I know once I'm on a beach, with the sea sweeping its beat and the sun giving me 20 minute crimson slaps, that the name of it will disappear. Then it won't even be a beach anymore - it'll be my servant - just as it should be. Then I'll give it any name I like, but that's it's victory - it won't let me remove it's name - only replace it. I then drifted into all the things which serve me - the list almost as long as the things which need naming.
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All that thinking took longer than it would have done ordinarily, but this was a mission. Stupid, incongruent ideas were scimitars this morning, and I'd just laid waste to about two hours already. I went for another coffee and some honey on toast before the next onslaught. The honey, squeezed from a plastic bottle, on bare toast tasted better than expected. I wolfed four pieces and sat at the computer again. I did an image search for several of these beaches. I looked at dozens of screens of skinny palms, crisp clouds parked on blue skies, crescents of sand peeling along the sea. I stared at every photo long enough to make them all different, with names as different as they deserve.
By the end of it all I'd murdered four and a half hours. Mission accomplished.
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And, that's it nowadays. I've pretty much broken the curse which hung over me for a couple of years - the one which will kill me. The thing is - I have no idea when I'm going to die. No idea at all - and not knowing was killing me, bit by bit, in sleep, in taxis to work, eating, having a shower - I'd got entangled in not knowing when I was going to die and not wanting to know.
Now, I still don't know, but I've found a cure. It goes like this: 'Either this morning goes, or I do.' Pure and simple - kill the thing that's killing you and you can live again.
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Let's raise a glass to time - the enemy.
