I wish to be up when it’s darkish within the morning, to maneuver sleepily round at midnight, working and sipping espresso and listening to music undistracted. I maintain the lights off, which retains the visible noise off. Exterior, solely the moon, possibly one neighbor’s tv flashing blue and inexperienced on the lounge wall.
My choice for the pre-dawn isn’t authentic, but it surely’s deeply felt. I’m enthusiastic about these deeply felt preferences, the little issues we love and detest, and the way every by itself is insignificant however, when taken in combination, they make the entire of a persona.
I acquired right into a joking to-and-fro with a good friend this week about daylight saving time. After we “spring ahead,” she argued, it takes her weeks to regulate, to cease feeling rushed within the mornings, to recover from having “misplaced” an hour. She receives this misplaced hour as a harbinger of summer time, her least favourite time of 12 months, its warmth and humidity. I performed the smug victor, delighting in my further hour of morning darkness and its complementary hour of night gentle.
I typically stumble throughout this list of Susan Sontag’s likes and dislikes, a unusual assemblage of the mundane and the extraordinary:
Issues I like: fires, Venice, tequila, sunsets, infants, silent movies, heights, coarse salt, prime hats, massive longhaired canines, ship fashions, cinnamon, goose down quilts, pocket watches, the odor of newly mown grass, linen, Bach, Louis XIII furnishings, sushi, microscopes, massive rooms, boots, ingesting water, maple sugar sweet.
Issues I dislike: sleeping in an condominium alone, chilly climate, {couples}, soccer video games, swimming, anchovies, mustaches, cats, umbrellas, being photographed, the style of licorice, washing my hair (or having it washed), sporting a wristwatch, giving a lecture, cigars, writing letters, taking showers, Robert Frost, German meals.
Every merchandise taken alone could possibly be handed off as a caprice, however within the listing, there are clues to the particular person — an individual who likes infants however dislikes {couples}, who likes the odor of mowed grass and dislikes the chilly. (A fellow vernal equinox partisan, maybe?) Absent any rationalization, the that means of the listing is malleable.
