John F. Peto: Lights of Other Days (1906)

" … a familiar part of our regular repertory."

Lest any reader of these chronicles receive the impression that The Muse and I were exceptionally courageous or virtuous after being Exiled, I must note that we experienced at least our share of LostDays there. Sundays seemed to have presented particular problems for me, for I couldn't seem to settle into any rhythm for them. Separated from my weekday routines and alienated by bizarre local rituals, I often felt like the odd man out on Sundays. Both DC and Denver exuded football madness in season, an attraction I never even wanted to muster. There are rituals that inhabitants of big cities observe that nobody not of those places can ever come to understand. The Sunday morning church bells served to alienate me further there. Our small hamlet outside of Denver featured a mega-church with parishioners in the tens of thousands among its half-dozen affiliated campuses spread along the front range. Whatever might have occurred in their sanctuary, they reliably produced a mega-traffic jam every Sunday at noon. We were wise to head in the other direction.

I mentioned in an earlier installment that shopping seemed to be the entertainment of choice for those living anywhere near shopping centers. I'd occasionally accompany The Muse on one of her forays, for she was the only shopper in our family. I'd drive, then patiently wait in the car until she finished. She would sometimes enter a store without even knowing what she was there for. She might stroll up and down aisles, just looking, without really searching for anything. I couldn't bear to accompany her there. I was more strategic in my approach. I'd never enter a store without clearly understanding what I was there for. Once inside, I'd bee-line to the appropriate aisle, grab the goods, and then head directly for the nearest exit. I might rarely stumble across and purchase something I hadn't planned to buy, but I usually considered those seductions distractions, merely ways to inflate the register count when exiting. Better if I just stayed in the car.

We avoided joining any of those communist chains, the CostCos, Sam's Clubs, and such, for they expected tribute before allowing us in their stores. We weren't joiners. Besides, their stores seemed terrifying, noisy, chaotic by design, and filled with stuff sold in quantities we could never successfully store or use. They seemed the very antithesis of effectiveness. Stores tended to be more crowded on Sundays, complicating even my strategic endeavors. Better for me to shop on a Friday morning.

When Exiled, Sundays tended to lag. I'd be up at my usual god-awful o'clock in the pre-morning, but The Muse might sleep in until nearly noon. That might give me six or eight hours to quietly pace my cage's perimeter. I sometimes felt overwhelmed and so distant from myself that I couldn't experience myself there. I'd feel hollow, often even unable to read. I could sit and idly stare out a window for hours, seeing little. I'd attend to the cats when we had cats on hand—the year we went without any cat presence produced a plethora of LostDays, time that never managed to register as it passed. I'd finish my writing before losing the rest of the hours to evaporation. I'd often even lose my ability to call home, though I tried to maintain regular contact with my daughter before she died. I'd call her but frequently find her preoccupied, cramming for the following week's assignments, or recovering from over-engaging the week before. Talking to home often left me feeling even more alone and distant. LostDays had no respite.

Whether I successfully rode them through or they just ran their way through me, LostDays would reliably fade away. An endless succession of tomorrows would re-roll the dice, and I'd wake up with a more lively disposition. On LostDays, I'd often skip supper as irrelevant after skipping breakfast and lunch. I might loiter in the yard through a grey afternoon or attempt to dispatch some mind-numbing paperwork, usually with little success, for I was just filling time, which sometimes grew so hollow its volume became immense. After padding around in my nightclothes for twelve hours, I might finally get around to showering by mid-afternoon. Our rules against turning on the television during daylight hours might sometimes get suspended, almost always in the middle of a LostDays afternoon, but to little effect. The time was generally intense, and the hollowed-out LostDays were rare enough that we never seriously considered them a problem. They were merely terrifying, a sensation that had become a familiar part of our regular repertory. We knew they would fill back in come Monday morning.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz