The Saroyan book I mentioned yesterday I Used to Believe I Had Forever, Now I’m Not So Sure contains a short story titled “Sunday Is a Hell of a Day.” Saroyan’s reasoning for this declaration goes as follows:
“It was Sunday, and Sunday means something to everybody. To many, it means too much.”
Later in the story, Saroyan notes that there is “the sense of slowness on Sunday. Of boredom. Of desperation. The feeling of being involved in dead time.” At the end of his story, he concludes by saying that “Sunday is a day that people quietly go mad one way or another.”
I don’t fully agree with Saroyan and his take on Sunday. Yes, I get that he is trying to say that Sunday can be different things to different folks. I think of the Sunday gig as being similar to hanging with that bipolar person you used to know – great fun to be around for awhile, but ultimately would simply wear you out and slowly drive you crazy. Because Sunday features all that church going, noisy family dinners and bonhomie b.s. in the name of being restorative and good for you, it can also be a little too much to deal with – if you let it. The Sunday coping trick is knowing when to say when and bang shang-a-lang out of there when it gets to be too much for you.
Still, Sunday remains my favorite day of the week. I say still because I briefly had Monday in the rotation as my favorite day. This occured right after I started closing Buzzy’s on Mondays and suddenly had a day of my own to do just what I felt like doing, including nothing. Monday therefore became my Sunday for awhile.
But old habits do die hard and today I still regard Sunday as my overall favorite day of the week with Monday a close second. Guess I can say that I now have 2 Sundays to enjoy. (It reminds me of Beale Tilton’s insight on retirement “Being retired means you have 6 Saturdays and then you have Sunday.”)
For some strange reason, this song came to mind even though it and this video are a tad on the heavy side. Filmed in Prague in 1988 while still under Communist control, look for the police in the background in several scenes. Those of you who have been to Prague will also recognize several of the sights.
The tune started as a blues-based piano tune but ended up with this dramatic orchestration complete with synthesizers, a cool semi-ominous guitar rif and then a kick ass sax solo filmed in a graveyard. The fact that the lead singer would eventually kill himself and had this tune playing as his coffin was rolled out of church just makes it all the more depressing. Don’t know exactly why I played it on this, my favorite day of the week.