I suddenly awake covered in sleep sweat and needing to use the bathroom. I reach across and fumble for the remote control of a neglected flat screen television that hangs on the wall, looking down on me with its watchful pixel eyes; I feel for the rubbery red power button, and the room gently illuminates the entire living space of my cosy little studio. The innocuous lime green logo of the children's television station on standby "ABC ME" lingers above me. "Returns at 5.00 AM" the letters at the bottom of the screen tells me. It's 3 AM, or to be exact, three forty five; but I tend to relate everything to music. So, like the Matchbox Twenty song goes: "It's 3 AM, I must be lonely." True, I'm lonely in my aloneness as the millions of people on this little island on the southern region of a revolving planet are sleeping.
In the silence of my cloistered apartment, lit up by iridescent green and white; I clumsily crawl out of bed, clamour to the bathroom and drink an entire bottle of water in a single gulp. I'm hot, thirsty and lonely — "but at least I'm not bored and stuck in a mundane religious puritanical marriage.", I ignorantly say to myself in an attempt to find comfort in my solitude. The sound of the refrigerator is deafening to my ears, so I turn on an obsolete laptop computer, and the whirring and clicking of a dying computer harmonises with the hum of the silver stoic refrigerator, and the high pitch sound of the television, calmly sipping on electricity.
I open the refrigerator and take out two avocados and a container of coconut water. I smile to myself; "I'm so vegan right now.", neglecting the fact that I had eaten fish for dinner and finished with a full cream milk hot chocolate. I grab a tablespoon and sanctimoniously eat my ripened avocados. I could be a Seventh Day Adventist and live an ostensibly holy life, without meat or caffeine. I had read all the writings of Ellen Gould White, why not? But, I've also read most the literature of L. Ron Hubbard, yet I'm not famous and successful as Tom Cruise; and I have read The Bible many times over including the apocrypha and deuterocanonical books, able to notice differences between the Masoretic and Septuagint texts, devote myself to volumes of hymn books and Church music; yet I'm filled with more doubt than an atheist. I have also read the Book of Mormon and the library of Latter Day Saints material; out of curiosity, but I digress. I sit alone with the company of innumerable pervading thoughts by my old mattress, surrounded my decrepit technology and scooping out avocados with a spoon, digging out the seed into an empty sandwich bag in a dimly lit room, while the rest of the world sleeps. The room brightens and "Arthur" appears. "Hey! What a wonderful kind of day..." It's five in the morning.
