Sunday, Red Mazda, and Serviettes

Tonight is the last day of this week’s labor.
Tomorrow and the day after will be productive in a different, new way.

I rest on Sundays and Mondays.

The advantages of having Monday off:
putting on a comfortable sweater around 6 or 7 in the evening,
heading out to buy groceries,
and seeing people on their way home from work walking in the opposite direction.
The park with a lake near my house is quiet,
and I can rest until late Sunday night
(resting and sleeping are two different things).

The disadvantages:
most cafés and shops I like are closed on Sundays and Mondays,
and I can’t enjoy those lovely long Saturday lunches.

It isn’t unfamiliar territory for me.
I have been working part-time every Saturday at Aomi’s shop since I was a university student.
If anything, the feeling of coming home to clean dishes after work on a Saturday is even better.

For tomorrow and the day after, I want to do something different from last Sunday and Monday.
So I made a list of what I might do:

– Go to a classical concert
– Visit an exhibition or a cinema
– Stock up on groceries for the week
– Make breakfast slowly, with care
– Go to an expensive café and order only one cup of coffee and sit for a while
– Go to a place where you can pay to play the piano, and practice
– Visit the Folk Art Museum and walk around the area
– Arrange my books by color
– Film a video where my face appears
– Change the photos inside the frames

How wonderful it would be to have a café near home with a terrace surrounded by trees.
I could read, write a little, stare into space,
and maybe write a letter to someone who comes to mind.

To be productive at home,
I think the table in the bedroom and all the stationery needs to be organized.
Right now I eat, write, read, and work all at the same table,
so I end up doing only whatever is easiest to do
(watching Sex and the City, or unwrapping chocolate after chocolate).

I’m wondering if I should move the table toward the window.
When I was a child, my mom always placed my desk against the wall,
saying that if it was by the window I would get distracted looking outside.
So I grew up reading the pattern of the eggshell-colored wall
while chewing my fingernails.

For writing or working on the computer,
facing the wall is definitely helpful.
Reading is different.
Reading is best when you can see passing children,
a red Mazda driving by,
a man walking and smoking,
grass swaying in the wind,
curtains pulled open,
and a sky that changes color over time.

Who said that reading is a lonely act?
To me, reading becomes most valuable and enjoyable
when it blends with the environment
and with all the noises of the world.
It becomes a kind of background music. Nowhere embraces reading the way a city does.

Saturday for Sunday.
I still don’t know what to do first tomorrow.
What if I turned my first floor into a little studio for people
who don’t know what to do on their day off?

There would be a selection of books, exotic flowers (or classic.), dark chocolate, sudoku, coffee, printed serviettes,
loose paper, pens, chessboard and a few artworks. And sometimes, I could serve a salad I made myself.

Someone unsure of what to do could pick a book with a cover they liked,
read for a while, and copy out lines with a beautiful pen.
Someone who loves writing could mix the copied sentences from multiple books
and turn them into a new story.

When I don’t know what to do,
I think I actually know quite well what I should do.

Tonight, I’ll start by clearing the table
and moving it somewhere new.