No matter when I seem to go to bed recently, I’m up somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30. This generally puts me in a ever-so-fuzzy state for the first hour or so, but suddenly the fog lifts and I begin to think cogently. Sometimes, I awake suddenly and completely, like a flash of satori. Regardless, the cold fact remains is that I am awake, far earlier than needs be.

Such waking until recently has been a rarity as of late, but historically isn’t too unusual. In college, there was an entire summer where, on Monday morning, I would involuntarily wake up at 4:45. What I started doing, instead of crying to the gods as to why I was awake before five, was to make a thermos of coffee, trundle off to a bench on campus, and listen to the birds wake up, and then watch the sun rise. Eventually this peculiar wrinkle in my sleep schedule fell away, and with it my mornings as an armchair Apollo.

When I am awake like this, these morning times become my secret time. Being a morning person isn’t as glamourous as a night person; there are no thrilling events that only take place at 7:15 am. Usually one is not regaled with witty anecdotes about “that one crazy morning back in ‘82.” The morning is a time for secrets, a time for listening and watching, and thinking. A time for coffee and birds and one’s own thoughts.

It seems to be a natural split; the evening belongs to the world of the extrovert, and the morning lies squarely within the demesne of the introvert. I can imagine Zeus, the night person, his activities and triumphs written across the sky, sitting groggy and bleary-eyed across the breakfast table with Poseidon, smiling inside, his secrets held deep beneath the sea.

Sadly, due to work and life consideration, I’m not always awake to enjoy my full powers as a factol of Morning in my own element. The world is not scheduled for the likes of me, and I have adjusted myself to this. Each night, I feel like an interloper in the world of the evening; while I can maintain a level of comfortable, I am not nearly as acute. Poseidon, roused from his own palace, dines with Gods on Olympus, and while he is a god still, he is not at home.

I’d like to think, however, that he does enjoy himself, and holds it safe in his immortal heart that no matter how things go, at the end of the day he can return to the solitude of the sea, and leave Zeus to clean up the mess.