You get up, use the bathroom and find your robe and slippers in the dark while your wife sleeps. Closing the bedroom door behind, you make your way to the kitchen at the front of the house. You flip on the lights. You walk to the door leading outside and find your way to the driveway. A newspaper lies rolled-up near the sidewalk and as you lift it your fingers find the rubber band, and slide it off. You find yourself back inside, closing the door and letting the paper fall open from your left hand, swing it up and onto the table.
You move to the pantry and the cart holding your pills and vitamins. As you have done a thousand times before, you slowly lift and open each bottle, moving left to right, accumulating the multi-colored variety of pills in a very small white ceramic bowl you’ve used for years. You keep it on the windowsill just for this moment. Taking a plastic cup from the same sill, you fill it halfway with filtered water from the door of the fridge. You pour half the pills into your left palm, lift them to your mouth and swallow them all at once with a gulp of water. You do the same with rest, and finish the glass, placing it and the white bowl back on the windowsill.
You shuffle to the stove and, lifting the water kettle you fill it at the sink and then place it on the front left burner. You turn on the gas, which lights with an audible click. You leave it on high. Your first decision of the day arrives: choice of tea. You select a “monkey picked” Oolong from Yingang, China, and place four teaspoons of it in a metal filter which you place in the top of a terracotta teapot. You remove a cut casaba melon from the small refrigerator under the counter, slice off a wedge and, running a sharp paring knife just above the rind, you place the cleaned melon slices in a white bowl. Seeing a remaining piece of a lime on the counter, you squeeze it over the melon. You take a teaspoon from the drawer, put it in the bowl and take them both to the table, placing them to right of the newspaper.
At the stove, you pour hot water over Oolong leaves, filling the teapot, and carry it and your cup to the table, placing it to the right of the bowl of melon. Sitting down, you unzip a bag of roasted almonds, and unscrew the lid from a bell jar containing ground flax seed. You pop an almond into your mouth. You remove the filter from the teapot and place the lid back on the pot. You pour some tea into your cup. You see the color is medium amber, not too dark or too light, just right for this Oolong. You dip the spoon into the jar of flax seed, move it to your mouth and take a sip of tea to wash it down. You do this three more times. You eat another almond. And another. You spoon a piece of melon into your mouth and while you chew you look at the front page of the paper. Everything is normal.
You think you are awake but you are still asleep.
