Time Untethered

Time Untethered

“I gotta know what day it is,” says the character Murray in the film “A Thousand Clowns,” a favorite of mine. Murray is a truth-teller. He wants to own each day, “or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you.”

Murray tries to avoid the mind-numbing workaday world, where he sits on the subway staring out the window, not knowing whether it’s a Monday or a Wednesday, knowing only that it’s a work day. I know what he means; I’ve been there. But it’s also liberating to be so tangled up in holiday time that you have to remind yourself every morning what day it is.

That’s where I am now. From what I can tell, today is Saturday, but it feels like the fifth Saturday in a row, maybe even the sixth. It feels deliciously unmoored. The days seem more mine when I can’t name them, when they’re detached from any duties or associations, when they’re pure and unfiltered.

So here’s to the holidays, when a Friday feels like a Saturday and a Saturday feels like a Sunday. Here’s to time untethered.

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