“Sunday night blues” is an acute condition, mostly affecting workers and students. This condition is characterized by anxiety about the week ahead and a sense of helplessness and depression. It most often occurs on Sunday afternoons and evenings.
The opening riff rings like a busted alarm clock that wakes you up then drags you under the waves, pulling you down into a bad American dream. A liquid guitar plays. A man blows into a jittery electric jug.
A few moments beneath a gigantic cross in Kentucky, followed by several weeks of thinking about faith.
Digging through a box of my grandfather’s things, I found this blade. The sheath says 30 cents. Made in USA. For a moment I thought about walking the streets with it and tracking down the kids who stole my bike the other day.
Riding through the back of northwest Florida, I speed past exploding swamps and palm trees that look obscene in the Saturday heat. A big sign with haunted house lettering asks, “Are you afraid of your energy bill?”
Maybe last week a popular actress sat down in the middle of the frozen food section and started crying and refused to move.
Last year I saw a billboard outside of Pensacola that said, “Save the date! Return of Christ: May 21, 2011.” These words were written in six different typefaces in four different colors, stacked next to a photograph of someone circling her calendar with a blue pen.
“Gentlemen settled their differences with swords and pistols,” says the plaque. Notes on wounded pride, 1980s action films, angry parents, and nostalgia.
The internet is wearing me out. Every minute in front of the screen is a knotty act of monitoring, filtering, and self-chastising. I live with the constant knowledge that I shouldn’t read about the latest political kerfuffle or click on streaming images of the latest celebrity arrest, yet I do it anyway…
I’ve started hitting the punching bag at the gym harder and more often, listening to old jazz and thanking my stars that I have the luxury to brood.
My mom died one year ago on August 23. It was early on a Sunday evening and her death was unexpected. She called the crusts of bread ‘bones’ and when she was seventeen, my mom studied in France to be a translator for the United Nations.
