Allan Jenkins - Morning : How to make time: A manifesto

4th Estate

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

Copyright Allan Jenkins 2018

Cover design by Heike Schussler

Allan Jenkins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Alba by Ezra Pound: from Selected Poems by Ezra Pound reproduced with kind permission from Faber and Faber Ltd. and from Personae, copyright 1926 by Ezra Pound, reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008264345

Ebook Edition March 2018 ISBN: 9780008264352

Version: 2018-02-26

For Henriette

For everything

As cool as the pale wet leaves

of lily-of-the-valley

She lay beside me in the dawn

Ezra Pound, Alba

For years now I have been getting up around 5 a.m. in winter (often earlier in summer). It suits me. I like the energy, the awareness before the day wakes. The quiet before dawn in winter, the shift from night to day in summer. I get things done. I write. I read. I think. I garden in soft light. It is my best time of day.

This short book will explore why.

I will make the case for being alert at first light. To wake in the quiet moments when the day inhales and the night fails. Just you and the stuff that surrounds you. To be extra alive in a way that near silence allows, sensitive to minute moments of change. To be able to gather yourself, your thoughts and feelings, whether it is to sit, to write, to walk, to read, to be inside or outside, to be sowing seed, to garden, to be saturated in experience. The gift of more time in the morning, so easily given and so easily missed. The simple opportunity to start the working day refreshed, renewed. To be whole in a way that near silence gives, to be one with the wild. To be natural in nature. To nurture yourself. The chance to be alive to your breath and distant from distraction. The space to be (by) yourself, before others wake.

Its easy, take it, half an hour, an hour, maybe more when you want. To be comfortable with yourself in a way that being alone allows no matter how many people you share your life with. The opportunity is there every day. Just you and the morning light, like flower or fauna. To learn to allow yourself to build in awareness, even if its just of birdsong. To be awake in a moving meditation. Try it some time, take small steps, the morning world is waiting. You and the sky or a computer screen, the page of an unread book, the taste of tea. Bring the outside inside. The day can start when you want, uncoupled from demands and distraction. And if this doesnt work for you alone maybe find someone who wants to share the silence.

I will talk to a neuroscientist, a fisherman, a philosopher, painters and poets. I will interview other early morning people. I will examine how changes in light throughout the day, through the year, affect different people, plants. I will report on how time influences behaviour. I will take the first bus. I will report from different latitudes, including the Arctic Circle in summer (from barely three hours of daylight to twenty-four hours of sun) and the effects it has on inhabitants and me.

I will investigate the language of light and morning, the many words from different cultures for dawn and first light and what they mean and how they change.

I will keep an early morning diary from my window. I will describe how the light lifts, the sun rises, the birds sing or not throughout the year. I will observe and report. I will listen and feel.

I will tell the mornings story.

Seize the day. Your morning doesnt have to be decided by what time you leave the house. The constant conventional rush: for breakfast, a bath or shower, in time for the bus or Tube or drive or walk to work, to get the kids to school. You can free the day, start in a different way, remove the race.

Build up to dawn, wake a little earlier, try half an hour. Skip Newsnight or Netflix, the phone the night before, or whatever it is you watch. They will still be there. Savour the time. Avoid doing the same you always do or the day will fill like an incoming tide. What is it you wanted to do but told yourself you dont have the time? Paint, possibly? Draw? Read more books? Bake bread? Do a little now. Its a start. Take baby steps.

Build on it, slowly if you need. Make it an hour earlier, build up to two, its honestly even better, open space enough to think and feel. Dont rush it, take your time, you have enough.

Perhaps try to skip social or other media before you sleep and once you wake. Make your early day a holiday. It is easy, honestly.

If winter is too dark and daunting (though I think it is my favourite season), start in the spring, when the light will be there waiting, as will writing, reading, yoga, walking, sitting. Whatever it is you want.

Try having a window open, your eyes and ears, too. If it is dark use only low light. Sit near the window, let the outside in.

Free your morning and mind, later skip the electric light. You will know where you are, where to walk, what to do. You will have mapped out the space you are in. Its simple neuroscience.

Dark to light, an eternal transition, be alive to it sometime, aware, awake.

Dont beat yourself up if you skip it or feel the need to go back to bed. Build it in sometime. There is no right or wrong, only more opportunity. It is magical the morning. A forgiving friend. Yours, too, if you want.

Afrikaans: aanbreek

Azerbaijani: sbh

Basque: egunsentian

Bosnian: zora

Bulgarian:

Catalan: alba

Corsican: alba

Croatian: zora

Czech: svit

Danish: daggry

Estonian: koit

French: aube

German: Morgendmmerung

Hawaiian: ao

Hungarian: hajnal

Icelandic: dgun

Irish: breacadh an lae

Italian: alba

Japanese: Yoake

Kurdish: bandev

Latvian: ausma

Lithuanian: aura

Luxembourgish: Sonnenopgang

Malay: subuh

Maltese: bidunett

Maori: ata

Polish: wit

Portuguese: amanhecer

Romanian: zori

Russian:

Samoan: vaveao

Serbian:

Spanish: alba

Swahili: alfajiri

Swedish: gryning

Turkish: afak

Urdu: Sahar

Welsh: wawr

Old English

uhta

the last part of the night, the time just before daybreak. Also dagian

verb, meaning to become day (root of dawn, the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise)

Middle English, also Scots Gaelic

greking

In the grekynge of the day, sir Gawayne hente his hors wondyrs for to seke (Malory,