The Unbearable Mondayness of Monday and Other Musings on Time

About one hour ago, the miserable Mondayness of today began to slowly morph into a more manageable beginning-of-the-work-week optimism and I abandoned the urge to flee my own life, eventually finding that I was actually humming between phone calls instead of grinding my teeth in despair.

As I have proposed in previous posts on this matter, Monday should NEVER begin earlier than noon. It is far too traumatic to jolt people out of their weekends anytime before that and I will bet that one day, some scientist will discover that there is a quantifiable quality to Monday mornings, kind of like the veneer of dusty grease that begins to form on walls near one's stove.

Indeed, as I write these very words, HOBB called to bemoan the Mondayness of today. "I cannot believe it's only Monday!" he wailed.

His words are a cri de coeur, an existential plea, a Ginsbergian howl.

Since I'm meditating upon the matter of TIME, I wanted to share a cataclysmic realization I had this past week on one of the Jewish holidays, either Hoshana Raba, Shmini Atzeret or Simchat Torah (who can remember anymore, they all begin to blend and blur until they are one mass of calories and prayerbooks and festive clothes).

The realization went like this: 365 days -- that is, a year -- is only the briefest building block of time, not the epic monument I had always regarded it to be.

Unbelievably, this realization dawned on me NOW for the very first time in my life. Until last week, I considered a year to be a substantial measure of time.

Now it seems to me as skimpy as a string bikini, covering only the essential parts, leaving too much exposed, virtually weightless, folding up into practically nothing, in perpetual danger of getting lost or misplaced or destroyed in the wash.