If I’m lucky my day begins with daylight. But often it starts much earlier. For some reason I wake up at 4:14 or 3:35 or some other random, bleary number that’s seared into my sleep-deprived brain by that first glimpse of the digital clock.

It’s then that I wish for the soft landing of the analog timepiece. Yeah, it’s early, a little after 4, or half-past three. But just how early it’s difficult to say. Maybe I looked at the clock wrong. Maybe it’s almost 5. I like the fuzziness, the offhandedness of such a beginning. I’d rather not know exactly when I started my day.