The Flavors of the Week

Time is a storm in which we are all lost. —William Carlos Williams

*Above: How do you box that which you are in, that which is all around you?*

Time is an odd construct.

If you search online for “time,” you receive more than 21,600,000,000 results.

time search.png — *Above: 21.6 billion entries. As context, 21.6 billions seconds is equivalent to* ***~684 years***

That is almost as incomprehensible a number as time is a notion.

Time is nothing more than man shouting into the storm in which he is enveloped.

It is the equivalent of David Foster Wallace’s two young fish inquiring, “What the hell is water?”

It is an attempt by our feeble human intellect to comprehend what was, is, and will be.

Put simply, time is both absolutely necessary and downright preposterous.

It’s odd how we conceive of and conceptualize it; time ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes. Days drag on and years fly by.

We divvy time up via the crisscross of lines over black and white space—as though something so abstract and abstruse could be confined by mere two-dimensional representation. It is tantamount to trying to paint a monochromatic rainbow.

Whether Julian, Mayan, or Gregorian, our calendars impose superficial order on amorphous entropy; they resemble mashed potatoes lazily plopped on a waiting plate.

If time is a storm, 2021 has been a raging tempest.

It has been an abject doozy; proof that you make plans and God merely laughs.

During still moments, I swear I begin to hear a faint, distant chuckle from the Man Upstairs. Maybe He’s less benevolent despot and more Joker: “Some people want to watch the world burn.”

Personally, I’d prefer less bang and more whimper.

Time—and existence, for that matter—stretches further than we laymen could ever imagine.

It is no more than construct that clocks (pun intended!) our mortality.

That said, we cling to this flimsy scaffolding of our reality despite its inherent limitations.

We humans stumble as time marches.

We just try our best to keep up.

Each day has a flavor, a rhyme, a taste, a hue, an odor, and mood that clings to it.

Each week emits an emotional residue onto us humans as we diligently, dutifully live through them.

Without further ado, the anatomy of the days of the week:

Sunday — The terror of skydiving into yet another week. The pangs of piling obligations and responsibilities felt squarely in the gut. Oh subtle beast, oh talented oppressor—all blood and guts and thunder!
Monday— Drab, droll, difficult, made to shake the rust and sleep off the weekend. Light with opportunity, soon made heavy by rigamarole of routine and meetings. A hydra of meetings: finish one and two more appear The happiness before impending doom.
Tuesday— Feet wet, you continue slogging forward, foot by foot, inch by inch. “After all, the night is darkest before the dawn,” you whisper to yourself as you ensure new covers adorn each and every one of your TPS reports.
Wednesday— The freestanding, veritable ugly duckling. The redheaded stepson who is also middle child, middle finger to working men and women and learning children everywhere. If “fuck this shit” was a day of the week. It stands as resplendent, freestanding middle finger of every week.
Thursday— The ring finger of days: utterly useless and immobile without the help of Monday/Wednesday keeping it steady. Its nickname, “Thirsty Thursday,” speaks of the workman’s pining for a just-far-enough weekend that inspires depression due to its distance. The slow drudgery of the workweek gives way to drinks, drugs, and debauchery.
Friday— Pregnant and swollen and sick with the expectation of the newborn; that screaming wailing mass: the weekend!
Saturday— Saturday, you son of a gun! Day of Champions! Wellspring of freedom, opportunity, wonder, and wanderlust. You reek of smoked barbecue and taste sticky saccharine. The weekend is the thumb. Without it, we couldn’t get a grip.

And so it goes…