Don't remember the last time an alarm woke me. I think it is The Winter of Our Discontent, character in that story imagines writing the time on a something. There's also the great line, the dirty Romans are forming up for Calvary. The story has an interesting take on time. Jesus is hanging on the cross...now. The Argentine Catholics...the baby Jesus? He's lying the manger, now. Ethan has a place, too, like Annie Wilkes has her laughing place, like Audry Wyler has her Mohonk Mountain...Ethan Hawke is the protag in Winter. I'm getting to a point, believe me you.
Another great line from Steinbeck's story: "I guess we're all, or most of us, the wards of that nineteenth-century science which denied existence to anything it could not measure or explain. the things we couldn't explain went right on but surely not with our blessing. we did not see what we couldn't explain, and meanwhile a great part of the world was abandoned to children, insane people, fools, and mystics, who were more interested in what is than in why it is. so many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic, because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out."
Ethan describes writing a time on a block of wood...or something...time, o'clock, and throwing that into the river...or some where...and that would get him up at four. I'd read that line yay ago and realized at the time and had forgotten it since, because I'd been doing the same thing...writing time on a block of wood...or something...and getting up at that time.
Only problem is...what with this time change, people are springing here, falling there, but me, I go in one direction, back. Was up at five...time changes...now it is four...this last one...yep, three it is. Eyes pop open with a kind of dread emergency, like there's something to do and there always is, hey? Always. Anyway, that's my story and see no reason to change it. I get a lot of paperwork done early on...step outside from time to time, you can hear the coyotes across the way there, chasing something, keying in on something...or maybe they brought something down. Life goes on.