It puts me beyond distraction to miss a fulsome morning!  And thankfully it is an abbreviation I have scarcely had to endure. Sleeping late is excusable only if it were mandatory – as when suffering an illness. Otherwise there isn’t a supportable reason to allow the best part of the day to slip away unheeded.  Even when I chance to remain awake the night before until as late as two o’clock in the morning (puttering, reading, writing or watching reruns of late night television) I resist that anomaly to justify sleeping late. There are so many effusive things about morning coffee and all that it entails.

Fortunately I am beyond the indispensability of alarms to awaken me.  Not because I disapprove of the annoying sound I once had on the clock radio beside my bed or the alarm in the hallway at boarding school; rather because I am already regularly awake throughout the night – whether to void my bladder or because of percolating anxiety or just old age – and essentially I have no underlying imperative which forces upon me the indignity to abandon the lair.  My sustaining objective is the indisputable rapture of the morning.

Cojoined with this matutinal obsession is the equally common persuasion of renewal, a trait which I find insinuates my entirety. Perhaps the modification is more accurately termed refreshment.  My clothing, like my carcass, is simply washed, not renewed.  Nonetheless this limited qualification does not detract from the value of refreshment. After a thorough shower, shampoo and shave, the addition of fresh clothes is the proverbial on the body. It all heralds a new beginning! I confess the breadth of my obsessive personality is such that I include in the awakening ceremony a cleanse of my spectacles; and, sometimes the rejuvenation of whatever else I regularly wear (like jewelery) or touch (like my iPhone). It may interest you to know too that the application of a high quality lens cleaner to gold promotes a curious result; namely, a deeper than anticipated varnish of the exterior, seemingly reducing the so-called patina while polishing and heightening the most minute engraving (“18K” or whatever other impression one may have insisted upon such as manufacture ID, your name or initials).

Now that I have survived as well a purgative career as a servant to the rich, and as a result no longer joining my early morning confederates for bacon and eggs at the local restaurant on Mill Street, the distinction of the morning breakfast has altered as well. When not persisting in the highly agreeable habit of steel cut oats at home, we’ve discovered a place on the St. Lawrence River at Katarina’s Coffee Shop (613) 213-8007, 513 King St W, Prescott which serves divine chocolate croissant stimulated of course by a strong coffee or whatever is your personal preference. The enhancement of the morning repast with chocolate is I suspect a French incursion upon the traditional British model of protein; but it nicely elevates the capacitating morning routine to a moderate form of permissiveness and indulgence.

Finally I must mention music.  I aim to include music is almost everything I do.  Morning coffee is no exception.  Once again I applaud Apple for its construction of remarkably pleasant conglomerates of music (such as indicated by the featured image). Comforting music is as much a nutrition for awakening as is coffee or chocolate.  And of course the cherished memories of the sea…