![[Sunday] Come Walk with Me](http://el-oso.net/blog/wp-content/plugins/ttftitles/cache/391d4112c9764b613f2d0725eecb543f.png){kind=small}
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago in the early afternoon by oso
Like many, like most I assume, Sundays are my favorite days. The eerie silence that first weighs on you with awkwardness and then picks you up, slowly, like a buoyant body ten feet below a salty sea.
The still silence of Sunday morning has the opposite effect of the distant roar of schoolyard playgrounds. The laughter, screams, and squeals of schoolchildren are immediately pleasing to the ears. Our response is somewhere deeper than the eardrum – that aggregate clamor of young emotional outbursts reminds us of a more innocent time; the sort of inhibition which these days we arrive at only after our eighth round at an overpriced club. But after an hour of those shouts, screams, and shrieks we beg for reprieve. The jealousy and nostalgia are gone. Their manic reactions to third grade gossip and dodge ball grate on us. We slam shut the windowsill.
But silent Sundays are different. We walk outside the front door and something has changed. Something is wrong. The decibels of modern life have yielded to something both unfamiliar and natural. The muffled humming of car engines, the subconscious tumult of distant industry, the buzzing of UV lights and computer fans: it is all gone. A penny dropped to the sidewalk rings clearly, reclaiming its natural properties from the mute of noise-polluted modernity.
To have such clear perception of so few events may sound like a blessing. But it produces anxiety. We reach for our nearest distraction. The cell phone. The iPod. The car stereo.
Sundays are my favorite days because I feel that automatic pull toward distraction. And because, more often than not, I resist it. Not for the entire day, but for the first hour or so of my morning walk. My eyes and ears and footsteps are focused entirely on what surrounds me. My imagination on what might lay beyond. To be able to focus so clearly on everything outside my six feet of meat and bones is a gift that comes only one day a week. Monday through Saturday is overload, filtering, survival, prioritizing, organizing, re-organizing. Sunday, Sunday just is.
Place. For a long time now I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on place and how we form our perceptions of different places. For example, in a few days I’ll be heading down to Medellín, Colombia. Most people in the United Sates, it seems, have shaped their perception of Medellín based on a single person and a single episode of a TV show. That person is Pablo Escobar and that TV show is Entourage. (I’ve never seen the episode of Entourage that mentions Medellín so I don’t really know what they’re talking about.)
With the exception of Prague, this trip to Zagreb is the first time I’ve set foot in the former Soviet Union and yet the general environment of the city and the character of its people have met a lot of my expectations. Most of my perceptions of Eastern Europe come from three different sources: Global Voices, Evgeny, and Veronica. Veronica’s Flickr feed is especially wonderful at conveying the idiosyncrasies of post-Soviet life.
So after my hour of Sunday silence I figured I’d try my own hand at conveying the realities of Zagreb. The music is provided by Mr. Tom Evergreen who plays every weekend morning in front of Zagreb’s St. Mark Cathedral. You can listen to the first track of his album Zagreb: Tocno U Podne while flipping through the slideshow below. I hope it conveys some of the Sunday morning rhapsody that I felt.
[...] Sasaki walks around Zagreb, taking pictures. Share [...]
I wonder what the actual stats are, I personally think of Saturdays as my favorites.
Mondays (“Life is just a moment in space”)
Monday, Dec 10th, 2007.
Manic Monday the Bangles sang.
And so it was when the energy shifted at 4.00pm and the pace of work exploded. The wires buzzed hot with news of a world in transition. It was 2.30am before I felt I could sit back and breathe deep.
I found the end to be a unique beginning.
A true Malaysian, said our prime minister, understood very well the impact of careless words and actions.
A true Malaysian, said our prime minister, was acutely aware of who would be provoked into retaliation and who would actually suffer the consequences.
A true Malaysian, said our prime minister, would try to be judicious in word and deed, even when striving for change.
“We understand that our situation demands balance, conscientiousness and a sense of accountability…” he said. “I’m willing to sacrifice public freedoms for the sake of national stability… We must never ever take our peace for granted.”
Monday, Dec 10th, 2007.
Walking Down Your Street the Bangles sang.
It was a tranquil start to the day. People smiled everywhere I went. From the Nepali security guards at my gatehouse to the Chinese owner of the restaurant where I ordered lunch, from the Malay pakcik cabbie who drove me to work to the Indian security guards there on road duty.
Monday, Dec 10th, 2007.
Walk Like An Egyptian the Bangles sang.
I walked in the drizzle, honouring the walk of the Phoenicians, and felt the energy rise through the ashes of universal discord, seeking the peace that would become the Order of the Universal Day.
Monday, Dec 10th, 2007.
Following Michael of the Bangles sang.
It’s the guitar again. Pa promised me one as a kid. Never got it, and I held it against him even after he passed on a year later ‘cos I loved the way it sounded. But now its chords were haunting me; had been since sleeptime Sunday.
HE sang to me in the silkiness of the dark early morn, teasing my eye open even as my eyes slumbered shut. A distant figure spotlighted alone and seated.
Looking straight ahead he strummed his guitar. “Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much. ARE YOU STILL MINE?”
The words pierced deep, jolting my senses to an awakeness and an awareness. THAT voice.
“Bugger you,” I thought Sunday. “What now?” But I felt cosseted.
Come Monday, I dawdled in the drizzle, hoping for an empty elevator for a few more precious moments of aloneness.
But I could dawdle no longer, it was close to 2pm, the bewitching hour when duty called. I stepped out in haste onto the second floor foyer and found out “what now”.
Six feet and more of meat and bones that I’d referred to as a Jackass with an opinion umpteen moons ago was ambling its way into reception, thwarting my urge to barrel straight through.
And the words of Wise Council, written for down the road, came to me: “There is a season everything turns around and consciousness wakes up ignited every day. The Panther as the Quantum Mechanic sets the (white) tone in the home (of the GreenBlue Gate).”
As I stepped into line, Wise Council continued: “There are particles of choice that work always when entering the house of lite, and those aligned wear it well.”
I stared straight ahead, unsmiling.
“SLEEPING BEAUTY returns and wakes up refreshed, aligned, and in hands of team mates ready to move Project Peace into motion. Accentuating this fact are those unafraid of truth and its Sacred Presence on land.”
Oh heavens, subtlety is not an attribute of Modern Heaven either.
“The rays combine efforts in physical union and join together what is properly intended. This takes a little more effort on the earth beings part to make haste and ’step out’ more where you are led by the heavens to be. At any given time your entire life could change based on a multitude of songs. The world is your juke box, and it is THE COIN you put it in that plays the celestial songnote.”
Monday, Dec 10th, 2007.
The Bangles sing Eternal Flame.
There’s a revolution going on, don’t you see?