I can't sleep…
this life gives us only so many hours
to share & how we share, i worry,
is wasteful-Sunday night & the tv on,
so we don’t look at each other.
on screen some reality tv stars
threaten to choke each other out.
my love, we are bad television,
happy as we are to hold hands
& eat greasy pizza together
during these small breaths
before Monday arrives like a fist.
— Josè Olivarez, “Sunday Love” in “Promises of Gold” (Henry Holt & Company, February 14, 2023) (via Alive on All Channels)
When I was young, and for a long time afterward, Sunday afternoons were melancholy. I used to blame it on memories on my father retiring alone to his study to listen to classical music. I didn’t like classical music. It made me uneasy…I didn’t like the closed door.
But I think something else was going on. The span of a week is a reminder of the finite, even to the young. And powerful Sunday, which starts out fat and lazy, stretching endlessly ahead, dwindles to a wisp, and just like that, it’s over.
~ Abigail Thomas, Thinking About Memoir
Notes:
Source: Adapted from the “Creative Process” at Iwastesomuchtime.com. Thank you Rachel for sharing.
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“The way my Sunday afternoons go, I end up doing a little bit of various things, none very well. It’s a struggle to concentrate on any one thing. This particular day, everything seems to be going right. I think, Today I’ll read this book, listen to these records, answer these letters. Today, for sure, I’ll clean out my desk drawers, run errands, wash the car for once. But two o’clock rolls around, three o’clock rolls around, gradually dusk comes on, and all my plans are blown. I haven’t done a thing; I’ve been lying around on the sofa the whole day, same as always.”
Murakami is one of my favorite authors (Kafka on the Shore; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Norwegian Wood). In addition to being an award winning and prolific writer, he’s a marathoner and triathlete. If he lands here on Sunday afternoons, I’m good. 🙂
Quote Source: Creatingaquietmind. Image Source: weheartit.com
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