My Day, with apologies to Eleanor*

My Day, with apologies to Eleanor*

By Charles Kraus

 I am trying to reacquaint myself with the concept of leisure time.  Linda is visiting in Northern California, and here I sit, no shows today, no predetermined agenda, mindless, blissfully unmoored, yet restless.  Curious, too, wondering if I can return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, those meandering, subterranean, reveries found on summer days of my unburdened youth.  Things were easier the last time I submitted to such an opportunity.

Back then, word processing took place in my mind, which instructed my fingers how and when to pound on the Smith Corona.   Accountable to no one, I conducted a life of free association, taking extended walks that began and ended at my desk.  Stimulated by whispers slipped into my thought process by life itself, non sequiturs would jostle about as I pursued my afternoons.  Occasionally, these would organize and become ideas.

I suspect I might attempt some writing today, or think something, or do something.   At the moment, I am looking out of a second story window.  Trees overwhelm the view, obscuring mountains, offering nature’s brand of protective sun block, trumping again and again every potential gap that might allow the sky to prevail.

A Sunday in the middle third of July, exclusively mine, uncorrupted by directives or expectations  … an aimless segment, a mishappenstance, a sector that powers failed to program, a lapse, a gaff, unregistered, unclaimed, except as revealed within my horoscopic particulars. 

Or course, it has been my intension to spend a day such as this listening to concertos while catching up on my correspondence.  Also, on my reading.  Possibly,  these worthy goals conflict with my vague plan to reorganize, or more accurately, to organize my music collection.  That is another thing I might just get to.  Or, I might not.

My dance card lists no responsibilities.  No pets, lawns, friends, foes, commercial enterprises, require my attention.  And, to advance this accounting, I’ll add that temperate sunshine compliments the view.  Out there, beyond my window, I am looking at the kind of day in which a person could get a lot accomplished.

You see my dilemma. 

Later I will know whether or not I talked myself into doing or not doing anything whatsoever.  For now, I am attempting to establish contact with the assorted components:  mind, body, soul -- a limited partnership -- that own the rights to myself.   I will take a census, conduct a survey.  Are there any serious demands?  Any immediate needs?  Any desires?  We take a vote.  The eyes have it.  The ears, feet, superstructure, the force field, unanimously in favor of absolutely nothing in particular. 

I am.  Therefore, I am.

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*  My Day was a newspaper column written by Eleanor Roosevelt six days a week from 1935 to 1962