The thick bread slice I’d left on the bench was gone.

I’d been away five minutes, maybe.

Through the dawn dark outside the raw, soaring, male voice called men to prayer.

But the floor, the benchtops, the table were still.  Empty.

Suddenly the darkness embracing me a moment ago outside the wall-less, door-less, window-less roofed kitchen pavilion asked me in distinctly Western terms, “How now brown cow?”

I had quick company, and the morning was getting busy already.

Where was the rat now, its ratty teeth rapidly breaking my bread?

Now I was awake, that’s for sure.

But the humour of this moment suddenly hit.

For no reason I remembered in the sunset last night  a couple of Hindus flew kites on the beach outside my place.  One reason they fly kites is so they may talk to their gods.

Where I come from, “flying a kite”   – at least when media use it – means a politician putting out an idea to see if the media will swallow and publish it.

Just as suddenly as this whirl of thoughts came they went.

And I sat then alone at the table, aware only, thoughtless.

Smelling the hot raw coffee, warmed by the dark it neither friend nor foe.  I was nowhere, not even here.

A gift of being alone can be the heightened contrasts solitude may reveal, and, sometimes when luck comes, no contrasts, no thoughts – rather, lingering moments of being.

Thank you, ratty.

Brekky and peace with a rat and the dark.

Imagine that.

And thank you, kite-flyers of the beach.