Bed Head
Four days ago
I set my alarm for 6:30am
because I knew that sunrise would happen
at 6:46am, and
I decided that I would like
to watch it curl its fingers
over the edge of the mountains.
It had been a while.
When my alarm went off,
I hit snooze (the way you do) —
the way I used to hang up on my shift manager (Kathy)
at Starbucks when our store manager
(the monster)
put me on a summer’s worth of open shifts
(even though she knew that
I loved to watch movies until one a.m.).
Kathy finally realized what was happening.
She’d show up to an empty parking lot
at San Pedro and Montgomery —
empty lobby lights illuminating
the Red Lobster next door — and
- Call me
- Wait for me to decline her call
- Wait nine minutes, and then
- Call me back
to let me know that one snooze
was my only allotment, and
”Get to work.
I’ve got a Cup of Love
waiting for your woozy ass,
but you know that Vihaan
will be here for his Short Sumatra
exactly four minutes after open
and I can’t open without you.”
Anyway,
three days ago,
my alarm went off at 6:30am.
I hit snooze (the way you do), and
when Slow Rise started it’s infuriating bell toll,
coupled with an old alarm label titled
“Buy the Twitter put”,
(Donald had just been booted),
it was so dark in my room that I
— somewhat disappointed —
turned off the alarm entirely
and went all the way back to sleep,
having concluded that that due to
precipitation in the air,
the sky would not bright that day.
It never crossed my mind that
it was so dark in my bedroom
because the sun had
not gotten out of bed yet,
and I was ahead of schedule, for once,
the way I planned to be, and
in just seven minutes I could have seen him
pop his head up over the Sandias
as greeted by a perfectly empty sky.
Kid, it’s dark outside
because it’s still dark outside.
Kathy,
I quit.
👆 Day No. 04 of Austin Kleon's 30 Day "Practice and Suck Less" Challenge.
This morning’s exercise was inspired by bed head — not the hair (although I have that, too) — and this morning’s sunrise, which I actually did wake up to see.
If you decide you’d like to see something beyond practice-pieces, check out The Fraction Club — a patron-based community of folks who support my creative work in exchange for exclusive writing, performance, commentary, interaction and more — or my book, It’s All Worth Living For.