When I wake up on a Monday morning I'm stiff. I drink my coffee like I'm bored with it. I make toast and don't even butter it because who cares, it's Monday, and I know already that today is going to be boring. The slow long draw of the beginning of the week is as detesting as it is expected. I take a shower and listen to some Bon Iver or The Damnwells; something Monday. It's slow and mostly solemn.
The uplifting freedom of the weekend just doesn't carry over to Monday. There is something that cuts Her off. Something that clicks shut somewhere after Sunday night HBO. Something that turns my steps into lines, directions, routines, habits. It's dragging me down; Mondays are boring.
I get the feeling that there needs to be a serious change to this segregation of days, hours, and minutes. Our whole concept of time is too strict, too scheduled, and I believe that it is controlling too automatically our every perception. I warn each and everyone of you not to title your Monday Monday.
I recently read Annie Dillard's essay Seeing in which she describes patients who had just been cured of a lifelong blindness due to cataracts. The majority of patients had no perception at all of space (referring to the distances between two things). She says, form
distance and size were just meaningless syllables to the patients. The blind finds the sights overlooking the Grand Canyon meaningless, the fish finds nothing above water worth living for, and the pessamist finds the fishbowl half empty.
I think the majority of us would agree that even though Monday and Friday have the same number of syllables, the same clap-clap definitive ring, we see them completely differently. Monday being the slow beginning stretch of the little engine that could up the mountain and Friday being the downfall rush of wind and adrenaline that we see our whole week propelling toward. A soothing wind, an instant relaxation akin to a speed boat taking off in a lake in the middle of summer to cure the stale and stagnant heat.
We need to address the days of the week merely as days themselves. By categorizing, we place them in an order that sometimes restricts their fullest potentional. If we refuse to see things in different ways than everyone tells us to we will never be surprised by anything. After all, the pessimest sees a half-empty glass of water way differently if he has just come out of the sun in the desert. I'm thirsty for a change.
4
Opinion
Jeff Tolman
