Burning honeysuckle oil during the predawn hours

I am saving up to buy a new bed, one that doesn’t sink in the middle (where the slats underneath subside towards the top and tail), and one that doesn’t creak when I am horizontal folk dancing. Maybe then, I won’t fall asleep watching the 7:30 report and wake up at midnight to spend my time rearranging the contents of my bathroom drawers, linen cupboards and jewellery boxes. Hopefully, other activities, such as reading the mail of people that used to live here, taking calcium tablets, upgrading my internet security and making CDs for other people won’t seem so… pressing.

I "think about" taking a walk from one end of my suburb to the next, (as this is probably the safest suburb I have ever lived in Sydney) but that thought leaves me as I can’t be bothered putting on my trainers at 3:45am.

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
Franz Kafka

Then I think about the fact that last year I read less books than any other year before because of the reading I had to do at university. I have three new books, from three of my favourite contemporary writers, all recently released, sitting on the bookshelf in my bedroom. I had stifled a secret pleasure at the cash register when I purchased them. I found them all during the same random visit to a bookstore. They sit there untouched after much longing for the next publication.

“I learned…that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”
Brenda Ueland

I told the people I work with that the two boys I live with went away this morning for a week. They asked me what I was going to do while they were away. I told them I would run around the house naked, turn on the TV, switch the channel from sport to comedy, and turn off the TV. I also intended to take a bath; and sit sprawled out on the lounge with a face mask on.

Instead, I locked #2’s balcony door, borrowed a CD from #1, heard noises around the house that don’t seem to be there when I know both of them will normally bang the screen and front door at 3 or 4am when they come home from their nightly drinking.

“True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.”
William Penn

I have heard the first of the birds this morning. I am worried about sleeping now, as I am frequently sleeping through both of my alarm clocks. I have topped up the water and honey suckle oil in my burner, momentarily switched on the heater to warm my feet, then opened the French doors to my balcony and looked at the 22 succulent plants that sit on the wooden floor boards and surround the wrought iron.

I am not really closer to “resolving” what to do when the New Year passes, other than to leave the suburb I live in to avoid the masses of “families” and “drunks” that come here to watch the fireworks on Sydney Harbour.

“The life of every man is a diary, in which he means to write one story, and writes another.”
Bess Streeter Aldrich