The week starts on a Monday. For many years now, the week starts on a Monday. Monday is the Day of the Dread, the day that comes prematurely. Monday cannot help itself. It just gets excited. All that resting on Sunday, and Monday is excited to get going, can't wait. You can't sleep knowing that Monday is coming. Have you ever heard anyone say Thank God It's Monday, except perhaps with their tongue firmly in your cheeks. dripping with irony.
Is Monday a fresh sheet of paper, or do you feel Monday is like waking up in the middle of night, confused as to where you are for a moment, one foot in the dream, and one foot poking out of the warm, somnolent covers, the only limb left outside, unprotected, unloved, a cake in the rain?
Monday comes first, with anxiety, filling you with a dread that however hellish Monday may turn out to be, it is just the first day of what will be a whole week of days, each with their own name and personality. During this pandemic, the days blur. There is even a day of the week that we call Blursday.
It is always Happy Hour in Blursday. Blursday is the day in which you forget just what day it really is. Have you experienced Blursday yet? I often have my Blursday moment on Whensday, as in when is this day? Lately, When Is This Day is the day formerly known as Tuesday. Just wake me up when it is Thursday, or as I like to call it, False Friday.
" They do things calmly that would be inconceivable with earth beneath them: they fall into bed and even into love with poignant desperate relish and complete disregard for the land-bound proprieties; they weep after one small beer, not knowing why; they sometimes jump overboard the night before making port. And always drink with a kind of concentration which, according to their natures, can be gluttonous, inspired, or merely beneficent."1
We are all passengers on this manic pandemic cruise ship. We are not officially lost at sea, but our movements are restricted. Still, we feel the need to make an effort to reach the shore. Life on the HMS CORONA, is very confusing, as we can take a stroll on the poop deck, we look up at the enormous blue sky, the only view being sky and water for as far as we can see. Will we ever find the land again? Is the shore a real thing, or just a word we dimly remember, a distant dream, a foggy notion, an implanted memory in a soggy impaired brain?
Dreams can take us on voyages that cannot happen in real life. I have had a multitude of strange dreams. Do you remember the flying dreams you had as a child? The dreams of climbing ladders in dark, dusty warehouses that lead to nowhere? You can't get back down, and yet, you can go no further. The dreams where people you love disappear, and you wake up crying, not sure if they are really gone. Or the dreams where those who have really disappeared come back. You are 17 in the back seat of the family car, except you are really 62, and why are these dead people driving the car?
"Often, though, and with as little volition, people will become ship addicts, and perjure themselves with trumpery excuses for their trips. I have watched many of them, men and women too, drifting in their drugged ways about the corridors of peacetime liners, their faces full of a contentment never to be found elsewhere."1
What does Donald Trump dream of? Do we even care? Surely, he dreams of himself. He dreams of drowning in money, like Scrooge McDuck. He dreams of glorious Russian pussy, showering on him so many gold coins like a winning slut machine.
He dreams of winning the big jackpot, the biggest jackpot ever.
See Little Donny sitting on his jackpot tweeting, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!
He calls out in the night, raging, screaming. Did you see Daddy last night? He came home late, and he was wearing a white wedding gown with a pointed hat. Not a Pope's hat, but a pointy hat like I get to wear at school. Except, this pointy hat fits his pointed head so perfectly. It was the pointiest of pointed hats.
And Daddy was so mad at me, he was raging "All Lives Matter." Bad Daddy woke Little Donny up, he slapped me, "wake up dummy, wake up, they are coming. "
Who is coming? Are the Russians coming?
"They are coming, and we have to be ready. Grease the guns, grab the pussy, and support your local white police. You can forget the generals and the troops- they are not worth your support, Little Donny. They are just a bunch of losers, suckers, nobodies, wasting their lives in shit hole countries. Who would do that? What kind of dummy does that? Just the thought of it makes my blood boil and my bone spurs hard."
He wakes up, feeling like he is drowning, and he is wet. The sheets are wet. His pillow is wet. With tears? Soaked in blood? No, just the acrid smell of Slavic urine.
1. MFK Fisher - The Gastronomical Me 1943
Yikes!You aren't wrong honey, but you gotta calm down. Oh, and, they say "Thank God Its Monday" in Toronto. ( Of course they do)
ReplyDeleteThank you for writing this. It's helping me get to know you a little better.
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