Tuesday, January 18, 2005 6:30:35 AM

The first fifteen seconds of every day are the most difficult. It is in these unlubricated seconds that we grind to show are true steel and they had been his favorite times of the day. He would take a moment to lie in bed fill himself deep with breath as if it were purpose itself and whip the covers back; the day begun.
Now something had changed. He credited it to growing older and the glass of wine he had before bed, but that first breath left him less full and he felt content to be under the sheets. He felt that maybe this was as good a place as any to be.
So he would lie sliding his hand around the blank wall of what had been his purpose, his cause and feel for the light switch that would spark him again.
The city outside roared. It was incredibly loud. The chorus of an entire city joined together to produce on endless tearing of cardboard. He wondered if it was always this way and he had never noticed. He wondered if all his senses were always subtly on alert. He look at the cat that some one had left behind and how it never seemed to relax. He felt that way. Looking up at the ceiling and the seams of the drywall that shown though he wondered when he would stop feeling this way.
The morning air stung his bare legs as he pulled back the covers. He hadn’t finished the previous days coffee and reheated a cup. He took his first sip and filled his mind with everything else so that all the mornings nothing would slip back and away till tomorrow.