It is 2:30 AM and I wake up from sleep because Keiko Kashigawa is barking intermittently and scuttling back and forth in the upstairs hallway. He must be chasing a house mouse in the semi-darkness. I am unable to go back to sleep, and so I fix myself a ground pork sandwich in the kitchen, annoyed that I bought a bottle of sandwich spread at the neighborhood grocery earlier, mistaking it for a bottle of mayonnaise. I down the sandwich with a glass of soda. I can hear, from where I am, an animated conversation between member's of M.'s cafe staff beyond the south walls. I think they are talking about how money should be handled. 

I sit before my painting of Saint Sebastian in progress, consider doing some more work on construction lines, then decide against it lest I paint on and on through the morning. I go out onto the small loggia and smoke a cigarette. The security staff members, two doors away, are having a lively discussion as well. The compound is unusually alive. A group of young men saunter by as though it were daytime, and there is considerable traffic on P. Tuazon Boulevard. Only the old scavenger is dead to the world--his mosquito coil has burned out completely and he is shrouded in his blanket. He reminds me of the stereotype hobos sleeping under bridges, the bridge, in this case, being our side balcony.

I suddenly remember that it is already Easter Sunday and no longer Black Saturday, and people are on their way home from vigil Masses, most of them with blessed candles and bottles of holy water. I recall all the Black Saturdays of my youth and how I spent them as though they were Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. 

It is now 4:30 AM and I am still at my desktop computer, amazed not only at how the world automatically attunes itself to universal occasions but also at how it goes out of its way to wake me up and nudge me into them.

I wonder if I can get myself back to sleep before sunrise.