Thursdays

I must sound like an old-time 78 rpm record that’s stuck in its groove. (You youngsters probably can’t relate to the old 78’s, which came before the 33’s and the 45’s, and were way, way before cassettes and CD’s, online music downloads, and iPods with white earbuds. Back in those days, you played a vinyl 78 rpm record on a turntable, and sound emerged from your loudspeakers. Sometimes the needle that rode in the grooves of the vinyl would not automatically lift itself off the record groove at the end of the music, and so it would continue scratching the surface over and over until you actually did the lifting yourself to stop it.)

I’m talking of course about my harping on the same topic, about time, the swift passage of it, and the profligate squandering of it. But actually it’s quite true, if you listen with an unbiased ear to my rant. Here’s how it’s been happening, week after week, month after month, and always faster and faster.

Thursdays are the worst. There’s the trash pickup, when you have to get the garbage cans out the evening before, because the truck arrives early, long before you wake up. In fact, it is the sound of their banging around in the street outside at 7 in the morning that wakes you up on Thursdays. Also the occasional cuss word in Spanish.

And every other Thursday it gets worse, because that’s when the recyclables are picked up. Those colored plastic recycle bins had some meaning to them in the past – blue for newspapers, dark blue for cans, grey for glass and plastic, green for other paper products such as empty milk cartons. But these days the colors don’t mean anything anymore. You can use any color for the various sorts of recyclable material, just so long as you use one bin for one sort.

What I’m trying to say, and am having considerable trouble doing so, what with all the interruptions and digressions that occupy my waking hours, is that Thursdays are coming at us far more swiftly than they had been in my youth. The weeks just fly by accelerando e con brio.

Talk about global warming and the melting of the icepack in Antarctica and glaciers in Greenland – everything, but everything is gathering speed today. Cars are driven faster. Fast food outlets turn out their products with ever increasing speed. You turn on the faucet, and water gushes out faster than before. Even insects on a summer evening seem to buzz around with greater speed. The momentum of life may be exhilarating for the kids today, but it is incredibly dizzying for those in my age group.

And the only thing I can think of doing is one that I must now do most days. It does nothing to slow down the pace of living by even a tiny fraction. What it does do is block it out for a little while.

The answer is a nap.