Somewhere, I learned that salamanders, tiny amphibious creatures that live in ponds and streams, have such a small brain that, if you remove one from their environs, they will starve and die. This is why it can be challenging to capture a salamander and bring it home as a pet. The change is too jarring for their tiny systems to manage. Incidentally, the only such creature I might want for a pet would be the big, two-foot-long hellbender salamander that dwells in the Smoky Mountains.
I'm not an expert in salamandridae like Bertie’s friend, Gussie Fink-Nottle, but I do feel a strong pang of kindred sentiment when I think of these little fellows getting picked up by thoughtless children and jammed into a pocket and suddenly losing their tiny minds. Like the hapless amphibians, I cannot be moved too far from my daily schedule, or I go completely off track. It’s not a choice. I have had some really odd and unpleasant experiences when I stray too far from anything resembling routine for too long.
Most of the time, I am pretty okay. The occasional holiday or vacation, or week off to putter in the yard, doesn't disrupt my balance. What does mess me up, strangely enough, is what just happened this past week: I worked on Saturday until 1. After that, the rest of the day felt like a Friday. The problem began the next day. All day Sunday felt like a Saturday. So much so that when Monday rolled around, it felt like Sunday. This is one of the things that we all experience, but I was so knocked off kilter that I began to wonder if I had Salamander Syndrome for real. If a calamity takes us away from the normal sense of days of the week, I may wind up jabbering in a corner somewhere.
I should add here that I have always thought days have a feeling or sense of themselves. Mondays feel like Mondays, and Thursdays have their own feel. I’m not sure if everyone experiences things that way or not, but it is real for me. There are aspects about each day that give it its own flavor. The point is, when you interrupt the normal flow of things, then some days get to feeling like others, and everything gets mishmashed, and I get lost. If there was a desperate need to know the day and I was in the grasp of my Salamander Syndrome, like this past weekend, then I would be of no use. You know, the hero of the event comes to me and asks what day it is, and everything depends on me getting the answer right, and I respond, “Tuesday,” and it is a Monday, well, you see how bad that might be for everyone.
I'm not aware of any Sunday of a long weekend in recent memory that has felt more like its weekly predecessor. All day, we did Saturday things. We even stayed up a little longer than we usually do, just like a Saturday. At some point, I acknowledged that it was a long weekend and that the next day was a Monday, but I was badly disrupted. Not fully in the corner weeping, but getting close, for sure.
To solidify the illusion, on Monday morning, Micki made biscuits, and I made eggs. We sat in the dining room and had our breakfast, and then named the chores we were going to work on. I called Pop Bare, and she edited a video. All Sunday things. All of this was diverted so far from a normal Monday that it was unsettling. I use the term advisedly. It wasn’t just weird. It was deeply, eerily unsettling.
It might be apparent by now, if you are a regular reader, that I like cosmic and existential horror. The idea that aspects of reality can slip or shift and leave us teetering on the brink of madness is appealing because it deals less with monsters and more with perception and experience. Why shouldn't a day's sense of itself switching or changing leave someone (like me) on the edge of my own sanity? The fact that a day can change like this and make itself seem like a different day isn't just maddening, it is sinister. Also, who decided that days ought to have a feeling? Why can’t days just be days? Why do they have to have names, and worse, feelings?
I imagine that, for those tribes that have been, until recently, undiscovered in the deeps of the Amazon, each day was the same as any other. They all only feel like regular days. Some days one goes fishing or hunting, other days one cleans out the hut. There is no particular day when any one thing is done, but any day will do. Their gods (if they even have them in the sense we think they do) do not require that one day be set aside for worship. Again, any day (or, perhaps, every day) will do. They don't have weekends or school nights. That would imply that they have the same system of work-a-day structures as we do. Every day for them is just “today”. It seems infinitely refreshingly relaxing to have days just be that day, and not assign them names, meanings, feelings.
Once, several years ago, a small person at the library came up to the desk where I was working and asked me what my favorite day was. In a moment of uncharacteristic dash and wit, I answered, “Why, today, my young friend. Today is my favorite day.” And, if this was true, it was likely because it was a Thursday. Gods help me, I have always had an affinity for Thursday. At least during adulthood. When I was a kid, there's no telling, but then, during childhood, the only time days or months matter is in the classroom, and back then, I had whole summers of untended, unlabeled time to wander through with little regard for the day or the passing time. What a glorious period of time it is in our young lives when we have no idea what day it is and are yet unscathed by the bliss of that ignorance. It makes me envy my granddaughters.
Thursdays aside, I'm always happy to wake up, and since every day that I do has a name already agreed upon by social convention and universal compact, then I suppose any day is as good as the next. It is less the name than the events that occur on any given day that give each its tone, and we usually don't remember the day anyway, but only what occurred on it.
Perhaps it was Lewis Carroll who suggested that, rather than having the same set of days resetting after the seventh day (why seven and not nine, which feels more rounded and broader), what if we just name every day something new? Instead of trying to force a name at dawn, we could wait until the end of that day to name it based on its best or worst features. This idea, which has the lovely incidental perk of there never again being a meeting next Tuesday, had some merit. It would effectively eliminate the need for Tuesdays. Then, we could just say “Be seeing you,” and be done with it. Date night could be every night. Tax day could be forever delayed. No more Mondays dressed as Sundays or Sundays in garb as Saturdays.
Better yet, we could simply make every day Thursday. How wonderful would that be? Well, I acknowledge that there would be some issues, namely those surrounding our seemingly ingrained need to schedule things in advance, and questions about logic. If it is raining, it must be Thursda would certainly pose some interesting logical dilemmas.
And so, in a sense, there are some benefits, for me at least, in being so damned devoted to a robust and clear schedule. I, for one, would not long thrive in a world without day names. I'd be like one of Carroll's characters wandering about, mumbling inanities, which, now that I think about it, is probably coming at some point in the next few decades, anyway. For now, though, even if it means a meeting next Tuesday, I’m better, happier, less wobbly, if we have day names and I can avoid Salamander Syndrome.
