5Am Blue

By Don Jones

5:00 a.m. Blue is the journey of a young man who learns of his inner power and destiny through love, lust, danger, and death. It awakens the inner soul and showcases the power of the human mind and spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543446876

Don Jones

Don Jones is a PowerShell MVP, speaker, and trainer. He developed the Microsoft PowerShell courseware and has taught PowerShell to more than 20,000 IT pros. Don writes the PowerShell column for TechNet Magazine and blogs about PowerShell at PowerShell.com. Ask Don your PowerShell questions at http://bit.ly/AskDon.

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Copyright © 2017 by Don Jones.

Library of Congress Control Number:         2017913222

ISBN:                      Hardcover                         978-1-5434-4685-2

                                Softcover                          978-1-5434-4686-9

                                eBook                               978-1-5434-4687-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/24/2017

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Contents

Introduction

Sunrise

High Noon

High Noon

Sunset

Sunset

Sunset

Dawn

Dawn

5:00 A.m.

5:00 A.m.

5:00 A.m.

5:00 A.m. Blue

Daybreak

To the dreamers of the world, to those that keep hope alive in the face of adversity, the ones that get back up when they get knocked down. Never stop dreaming; another day will come.

Don Jones

INTRODUCTION

A S I GET older, I find myself contemplating the sacrifices and decisions that I have made, whether bad or good, if I triumphed or failed, if I built everlasting relationships or burned bridges.

There was a time in my life when none of these things mattered, a time I thought I would live forever. I was unaware my actions had any implications on others. When we live recklessly in the fast lane, we are destined to crash or change our courses.

In these recent times, I have become fascinated with daybreak. Right before 5:00 a.m., an amazing thing occurs that the untrained mind is unaware of. It is the occurrence of night turning into day. The birds begin to start chirping faintly. The fading gray of night calmly but rapidly transforms into a 5:00 a.m. blue. The night is cleansed of any sin or wrongdoing it has committed, and the earth briefly has a clean slate.

My morning ritual consisted of me sitting in the Brooklyn Promenade, watching Manhattan’s big-city lights begin to dim as sun’s light begins to shine before my morning jog to the gym for my daily workout. On this particular day, I found my mind wandering to a distant but recent time that changed my life and the lives of the players in the story forever.

She was never mine to keep, only to experience for that brief time during the final stage of evolving into a complete man. There is only one way I can tell this story. Not as much as to how it happened, but why it happened. She had to save my life to bring balance to her own.

SUNRISE

M Y REAL-TIME VISION began to fade as my mind’s eye became clear. That put me to where our scene is laid on a Boeing 777 approaching Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. It was raining, and as I was landing, the sun was rising. It was not just any sunrise, but the first one of that day for the whole world. I was in the Far East, and this is where all days began for the world. It was midsummer 2009; I was twenty-five years old. I have an old soul, and I was listening to the Jackson Five Anthology album. I Wanna Be Where You Are was the song playing, and I was eager to conquer Japan over the next three years like I conquered any and all terrain I set foot in since I was a teenager traveling to different cities for girls who loved light-skinned guys in racing jackets. I was full of life and even fuller of myself. I carried myself with a certain air of royalty, an unrivaled divine power—a self-proclaimed immortality! I was in a space of life where I was fully aware that I had control of my life’s canvas and that the strokes I made were mine and mine alone, uninfluenced by anyone else. I loved the control I had, and I was eager to test my limits.

I had taken my life savings and headed to Japan to train for a few years in judo and work as a photographer for a small magazine that was based in Japan, as well as generally expand my horizons by living abroad for a few years before I decided to head back to school and become an attorney and live a settled, normal life if all my dreams of being a famous big shot fell through.

As I cleared customs, I waited for the next train that would take me to the city and my temporary dwellings, until I met a girl who was checking into the same command I was. She called herself Princess. She was coming from America also, and we had a lot in common. Princess was going to Japan to become a supermodel and break into the fashion scene. She was armed with her beauty and a dream. She wanted to go somewhere she could stand out and make her ascent to the top quicker. She was a cutie, and we definitely had a mutual attraction that we would later explore during our time in Japan. Our complete story is for another time and place, although we did not know at the time that our lives would be intertwined in another circumstance. That really showed me how small the world truly is and to be careful of what you do in the dark because it always comes out in the light. This place was already starting to pay dividends, although I was there to experience new things (by new things, I meant new women). However, I was still a fan of the classics too.

***

I remember taking in my surroundings. What amazed me the most was, this was the first time I felt like a minority. I knew that I looked different and could not be mistaken for a fellow countryman. It was a humbling and exhilarating feeling. This was a time for me to be thankful that Japan has allowed me to be part of her deeply rooted and proud culture. I had been around the world in countless countries on my travels in my early years, but it always felt like America. I would always visit places throughout Europe where people looked like Americans and most spoke English, so I never had the feeling of being in a different world. This was one of the first times when my surroundings humbled me. This time I was solo, and I always do my dirtiest dirt by myself. Aside from briefly meeting Princess, I felt like I was one in a million. I was anticipating how important and exciting this time in Japan would be in my life.

As I stepped outside the airport into the Japanese morning air, I took a deep breath and let the clean air of Tokyo fill my lungs. I could smell last night’s rain, and seeing the mist rise from the grass was cleansing. The feeling of rebirth came over me. As arrogant as I was, I remember being humbled and silenced for a moment. It was one of those intangible moments that money cannot buy and pictures cannot capture. There are certain things in life that you have to just be in the moment for and enjoy while they last, for these are the true moments that stay with you forever.

It was an unbelievable sight. Everything from the billboards with the beautiful Japanese women on them to the cars with the steering wheel on the opposite side and people driving on the left side of the street captivated my senses. I was looking at the same companies from America with different faces. From the kanji written vertically vice horizontally and the distinct style of fashion that was Japan and only rivaled by Japan, I was in a different world so opposite from the Western civilization I was born into. I thought my way of life was the only way of life; I never knew how widely shut my eyes had been until then. Nothing mirrored America here. Although I was on the other side of the world, I felt at home, and I said to myself that this was going to be my playground for the next few years. Smiling to myself as I looked around, I knew this was the best move I had made in my life, and I would understand later why I felt this way.

I had a little while to wait before the train that was going to take me to my temporary dwellings arrived. I wasn’t hungry at the time, but I knew my body and I would be eventually. It was the kind of hunger that you wanted to save for a good meal. I wanted my first meal here to be one that I would remember forever. I had no idea what I wanted to eat and, at the time, had even less of an idea where I would get it. I stood there in my blue jeans and white tennis shoes; I had on a Bob Marley shirt, my arms were as big as my ego, and I was ready for anything.

*     *     *

As I sat on the train with my seabag, suitcase, and directions to my new apartment printed out on my lap, my iPod was playing Tori Amos’s Torn. For some reason, it fit the mood. I was people watching on the train and thinking, Is this what people from other countries do when they come to America? I was astonished by the different features that were so distinct and cultured and different from my bubble that was America. It was a humble feeling of not being a tourist but not quite one of the locals either; I felt I was suspended in a gray area of belonging. I wondered if I seemed as interesting to the natives as they did to me at the time or if they even noticed I was there. I was full of myself at the time, and I thought I cast a big shadow wherever I went; however, I still wondered if anyone noticed me. They were ignoring me.

I listened to the quiet conversations and wondered if they were talking about the same things Americans talked about. I made myself laugh when I noticed the way an elder gentleman looked at me with an expression that suggested he was wondering what the hell I was staring at, before he