The morning sunlight shone its egg yolk colour through the tissue blind depended on the rain smeared windows. It was just after eight o’clock. A clean-living time to start the day. A gratifying fortuity for my yet unresolved agenda. But first an added descent upon the pillows. The sleep mask arrayed upon my brow. My eyes shut, a darkroom image weeping mercury light. The seduction to sleep, to drift for a moment longer, beyond purpose and obligation. Time to gather one’s thoughts, to recall what it was that perturbed me during the night. Or was it yesterday that I contemplated the correct assembly of life’s puzzles?  For an instant I imagined it could be solved by sitting on the edge and watching, steering myself into my own mind.

At the morning table I munched sweet green apple slices, the moisture dripping upon my lips. Outside I sensed the air was fresh.  The wind NE 28 km/h invigorated the day. The subtropical film had overtaken the island. Balmy air off the North Atlantic Ocean.

The white orchid growing outside the front door of the townhouse proclaimed itself on the tree among the tangled dried moss.

Nothing to do for the remainder of the day (following this morning’s perfunctory grocery shopping) but tricycle amid the magnificent breeze, beneath the wisps of white clouds and the azure dome. Perhaps later a swim in the turquoise sea, tasting the sea salt on my lips, floating upwards, drifting towards the marker buoys with the parade of white and grey seagulls.

The salt sea air insinuates everything. My burnished skin is moisture laden. The car has crystal silver streaks on its black paint. The mounting intense heat recalls a desert dryness.

Laying beside the pool in the blazing sun I am relieved by the unending wind. In my routine transition from front to back I see the shadow of my head and toros on the mat of the chaise longue upon the foot of which I have strung myself to read. There is movement in and about the pool as people seek to accommodate the unforgiving noontime heat. Trails of conversation and clouds above, hurrying by with the wind.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michael Angelo.

Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot

I have booked a haircut with Cindy across the road a week hence. She will style my winter objective, probably the final amusement of fashion for me. I have iced myself with burnished cover and attempted to lose weight.  But the protuberance lingers as testimony to my hedonism, while nature teaches and prepares me to die. Is it that inescapability which sustains the pervasive midnight anxiety?