First day, last day, every day
Okay. So you wake up. You wake up, you yawn, you scratch yourself. You peel sleep crystals from the corners of your eyes. You check that your body is generally intact, as you left it the night before, before it was tossed this way and that in dreamtime or nightmare hours. You run your fingers through your hair. Bad hair day, Bad, bad hair day. That lank mop of twisted strands will take precious minutes to brush. Must move, really must move.
Radio. Radio on. News. Beep beep beep. Here is the news. The world is still turning, still spinning on its axis. Elections, rebellions, civil wars, surveys, mortgage rates, currency markets up again down again plunging down again certain to crash again then up up and away, celebrities, celebrity in drug shock sex addict bankrupt morally suspect sniffing coke from an upper class socialite’s breasts award-winning Priory checking-in shocker scandal outrage. Everything much of a muchness. Normality. The sick smell of torpor. Boredom creeps up your backbone.
“And finally …”
An announcement. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Correction. The only day. No more days. Just this one. Another correction. Not just you. Everyone. Pause a moment for a broadcaster’s nervous cough. He hasn’t had to deliver a report quite this momentous since the moment when a Princess’s ditzy head smashed into a bloody pulp in the back of a sleek Mercedes.
“Let me repeat that. It has been announced by someone or other - possibly God, possibly another omnipotent power who wishes to remain anonymous having ticked the ‘no publicity’ box - that today is the single day. Today will only end when you die. Existence stops here. You have two hours to make your arrangements, to specify precisely and exactly and without equivocation - without hesitation, repetition or deviation - how you wish to eke out the remainder of your tedious three score years and ten. Then that’s it. The end, but also the beginning. This, indeed, is the first day; but it is also the last day and the every day of the rest of your life. Choose wisely, since there is no appeals process.”
Make your decision. Whisper it into the silent white void. Speak it. Shout it. Go on. Do it. The clock is ticking, but what do you want to be doing when it stops?