I started this silly little item back in 2020, mid-Covid, when all of us were slightly insane but didn’t even know it. Everything was so strange. Looking back, it’s all one big blur. I was unemployed for two years (Crooked Creek being shut down for two full seasons). Dylan normally works at home or does her botanical fieldwork alone. So we just hunkered down in “the little yurt in the big forest” and lived ourselves a peaceful little existence. With no kids and no family and everybody else quarantining away we were more or less on our own. But, seeing as how we’re both solitaires by nature, it was relatively easy for the two of us. At a certain point, though, the days began to blend together and for a long time it really made little difference what day of the week it was. This whole phase was made even more surreal by the fact that people were dying like flies and none of it touched us. And by the bizarre pandemania-induced culture wars—a completely unforeseen development. We paid way too much attention to the news and were dismayed and disheartened by the anti-mask and anti–vax contingent. And the full-on serial denialists and…well…everything. It was just weird.
ANOTHER SIDE-EFFECT OF LIFE in the time of plague: perpetually forgetting what day it is. Or, more to the point, of not really caring what day of the week it is because now that there’s no SNL it doesn’t even matter. An offshoot of this temporal indifference is the uncanny phenomenon of time seeming to creep along on all fours with tongue hanging out while at the same time the months are flying by. Just flying by! You know what I’m talking about. (You can tell that things have gotten really bad when you have to stop and think about what month it is.)
Dylan and I have this little insider’s joke. It started out like this:
Some while back we were talking about how the weeks seem to just zip by.
“It’s Thursday again? Already?! How did that happen?”
“Yeah, it seems like it was Thursday just a couple of days ago.”
“No…I think yesterday was Thursday and it’s already Thursday again.”
Thus was born our own private way of expressing puzzlement at the hazy sense of time’s passage during the Trumpdemic era, as we all try to make our way through this everlasting shit-blizzard of incessant obscurantism. While in isolation.
In the PanTrumpic era it’s always Thursday.
Yesterday we took an afternoon stroll down Back Ranch Road, something we typically do several times a week. This really is a lovely walk: down a narrow lane that, up high, traverses a broad marine terrace…open land with grazing cattle for pastoral effect…views out over the Pacific, across Monterey Bay, with the northern reaches of the Big Sur coast clearly visible on clear days. Soaring hawks. Bluebirds. Meadowlarks. Look! There’s that coyote again! But on this particular day the sky was opaque, with a sickly orange glow caused by smoke from the brand new fires up north. Everyone hereabouts is still in a state of perpetual anxiety as a result of recent close calls with all the local infernos [The CZU Complex Fire —ed.]. A pervasive, background agitation haunts us whenever there’s a hint of fire. (This backdrop of mid-level anxiety deserves an acronym—how about PCSD? For Post-Conflagration Stress Disorder.) This, on top of the grim situation in DC and our whole nation, for that matter. As we walked along we were chatting in the vein of what used to be called “talking politics.” Nowadays it’s something different…something considerably darker, as revealed by our calmly discussing, with straight faces, the odds that our beloved country will manage to survive the one-man onslaught against truth and decency. (A thing I “do” with alarming frequency these days: in the course of what feels like a normal conversation, pointing out how remarkable it is that we’re so casually and so matter-of-factly talking about how we/us/everybody/the-whole-world may be witnessing first hand the last dying gasps of democracy in America, ho-hum.) (You know me! Always the optimist!)
After our un-cheery dialogue dwindled off into pained silence, this exchange:
Dylan: “What day is it, anyway?”
Tim: (pause) “I think it’s Thursday.” [I was reasonably certain it was a Saturday.]
D: (laughs) “Are you sure? I thought today was maybe Shatterday.”
T: “No…. Wait: you’re right. It is Shatterday. Yesterday was Thursday.”
D: “Then wouldn’t this be Doomsday? Didn’t you go to town on Thursday?”
T: “No. Remember? I went to town the day before, on Grimsday. I think.”
D: (laughs) “I thought you went to town on Bluesday.”
T: “No, no—it was definitely Grimsday. Bluesday…I have no idea what we did on Bluesday. I can’t even remember what we had for dinner last night? Can you?”
Et cetera. It went on like this a bit longer but I’ve forgotten the rest.
Well, I suppose this all sounds pretty trivial and not particularly funny. One of those “youda-hadda-been-there” deals. But we were cracking ourselves up good and it helped lighten our psychic load.
©2024 Tim Forsell Nov 2020, 5 Jan 2024
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