Sunday Afternoons

It's 5:00 PM. A Sunday afternoon. The trees are stagnant, bathing in a lazy sun who holds the day in Its waning stare.  I am, as always, in the basement of a one floor house with the smell of laundry, married with curry powder, clinging to the pleasantly dank air (cool enough to fight the heat, stale and dark enough to pretend that the passage of time could be slowed as easily as the flow of a stream by careless leaves). We have just returned from the large trampoline in the backyard, where our merry play mocked the sun for Its indifference. Though It was present - as It always was- it could not join us. It merely soaked into the treetops, forced to witness our regular jubilation on a day that was supposedly its own.

But the sun would have its revenge. Even in Its final moments, Its rays would tease me on my way home, a fifteen minute walk down one road, then up another, to my own home on Mountain View road. I was never in much of a hurry, though. When that hour sets in, at the close of the weekend and the coming of school with the tide, time loses its step. No longer do the unforgiving Ticks and Tocks that reign over every minute crack unabashedly into the wall of sanity against which I lean. And yet, this is the most frustrating time of the week. Despite the absence of the temporal metronome, the sun keeps time perfectly. Triumphant in Its ballad, the walk home is an encore, a symphony of regrets, who's composer watches every beat. Maybe once or twice, in the early days, I tried to outpace It's meter. But the sun was clever, or perhaps simply petty, and melted the pavement so that it flowed downhill (The entirety of the trek was uphill). I know better now, and my pace obeys Its wishes.

This struggle recurs every Sunday, without fail. Both of us, the sun and I, fail to see the cycle of reciprocated animosity, truly believing ourselves, respectively, to be the one wronged. What right had I to rejoice on Its namesake day? To mock Its dying refrain? And what right had the sun to compose my free time? To demand my complacency for a concert I did not wish to attend? Neither of us were justified in our accusations; in fact, we were both wrong. For my mocking was out of envy- as was Its intrusiveness- It would watch upon every Sunday for as long as It wished. Yet It could never absorb the joy It observed. No amount of fiery yearning, of explosive jealousy, of simmering hate, would alter this eternal dynamic.

And so the Composer wept, for He would never join His audience. And His tears sweetened the music. And the music brought tears to His listeners, because they knew the concert would soon come to a close. And they raged against Him, for they believed him to be an eternal fixture, an undying member of the celestial audience. But he could no longer hear the music. And so the Composer wept.