Week Ends

In ancient Rome, a week was nine days long. Everyone worked every day except on the ninth day (the market day -- and the folks in the market worked that day, too).

They figured the day at 24 hours, but divided this into 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night, no matter what, which meant that an "hour" during the day in the height of Summer was actually 1 hour and 16 minutes long, while an "hour" of Summer night was 44 minutes long.

Ah yes, I'm back to this topic -- the simultaneous elasticity and rigidity of time.

So, today is the "weekend". Even though I don't work a traditional work week anymore, there is still something powerful about the concept of the weekend that seems to penetrate my very being, encouraging me to sleep later and party heartier than on other days.

I'm coming to the conclusion that time may be so hemmed in and categorized by our calendrical notions that essentially, time is whatever we say it is.

I have often had the experience, after waking from a late afternoon nap that was very deep, of being completely disoriented in terms of time when I awaken. Coming back to wakefulness in the twilight of evening is particularly likely to send me into a state in which I have no idea what time it is, whether I slept the night through, or simply drifted off for a few moments.

I notice that this rarely happens after a night of sleep. Unless I've been sick or something, it's highly unusual for me to wake up in the morning and not have a strong sense of where/when I am and how long I've been asleep.

It's that magical nappy thing.

Naps seem to have a certain spectral wizardry about them. After a nap, I come back to the world with a very particular blinky-eyed stupor that is different from any early morning rising. The world looks peculiar and altered to me.

When I consider that my cat experiences this state seven to ten times a day, I don't wonder that she seems more enlightened than nearly everyone I know.

Today, I am not napping (at least, not yet). The day is gray and the sky seems very close to the ground. The light in my office is actually on, though it is 2 pm. It is, in my opinion, a perfect day for a nap.

So far, on this Saturn'sDay I have:

1. Responded to a posting on a discussion group that I belong to about the concept of creating "family" feeling in intentional community.
2. Drunk four cups of green tea and a Miller Lite.
3. Scheduled two appointments with clients.
4. Stared at my computer screen for about 45 minutes in a complete stupor.
5. Taken a bath
6. Smoked half a cigarette.
7. Done my morning Psychic Hygiene practice
8. Read 5 pages of Colleen McCullough's "The First Man in Rome"
9. Read my incoming email.
10. Remained in bed and dreamed of a raccoon trying to dig his way under our garden fence.

Not in that particular order.

Some other things I intend to do today are:

1. Complete the May newsletter and update the SCS website, now five days past the first of May
2. Clean my office.
3. Stare out the window for 45 minutes.
4. Pet the cat.
5. Have at least one other bath.
6. Check the lottery at 9 pm and see if we won.
7. Watch a movie, if I feel like it (I will probably feel like it)

I wonder what will happen next.

Here's the downside of the "weekend" phenomenon for me. I see it, not just as "free" time, usually, but as "time for projects". I believe that this is a holdover for me from the days when I worked a "regular" job. In those days, the weekend was a snatched segment for myself, but it was also the time when necessary projects like lawn-mowing, laundry, etc., had to be accomplished. So, for me, weekends were not to be "wasted".

How weird.

How weird that I still have that feeling sometimes. I haven't worked a "regular" job since 1988 (18 years later, I still have this seemingly-autonomic response that I "ought" to be making "good use" of this "free" time).

I've "been my own boss" for nearly two decades, but I still seem to be a somewhat bossy boss -- always monitoring my own time-card, always performing these daily, rather than annual, performance reviews on myself. Accck -- Pooey!

See, that's the catch -- if you become "your own boss", you also become "your own employee" simultaneously.

To give my self/selves credit, I think I've improved, both as my own boss and my own employee. I've relaxed on deadlines that weren't really critical, and have become more fastidious about making sure that the critical deadlines were met.

Still, I think that the boss/employee relationship around here could use more improvement (this from the internal external auditor) -- Oh my GOD! -- I'm now not only my own boss and my own employee, but my own external auditor as well!

Will it never end!!!???

But it's Saturday. The day of rest before the day of rest. So the auditor, the boss, and the employee must all be allowed their "day off", the little weekly mini-retirement wherein they train for the real thing.

I think it's all really weird -- because right now, in another part of the world, it is already either yesterday or tomorrow.

A couple of weeks ago, Carruch was talking about parallel realities, and indicated that there was another concurrent parallel reality on this same exact time/space thread in which the Roman Empire had never "fallen", another in which the Dark Ages had never ended, another in which we had already blown ourselves to smithereens with atomic bombs, etc., etc. -- and I can extrapolate then, that there is another in which the library of Alexandria still exists, was never destroyed, and has only been collecting ever-more fabulous works of literature over the past few thousand years.

I think I'm just going to scratch that intention list I made, go over to that parallel reality today, check out a few scrolls, and settle myself by the living room window in the recliner to read the lost works of Aristotle.

Ah. That sounds much better.

Then I'll have a nap.