Every day during these holiday weeks seems to me like Sunday, which, I hasten to add, isn’t a particularly good thing for someone who likes to think of himself as purposeful if not actually useful.
Long ago, I gave up going to church, though the Steelers filled the sacramental void with their glorious play, and thus there was something to look forward to on Sundays. But now it seems they’re just another team. Everyone’s injured, Antonio Brown has shot himself in the foot just as surely as Plaxico Burress shot himself in the thigh, Martavis Bryant, counseled by my dad’s gifted law partner, Bob Wolf, not to let success go to his head, did, Le’veon Bell is playing for the Jets, and Hines Ward — Hines Ward, he who was always gleeful amid the fray — is coaching for them. Thus we Steeler fans are borne back ceaselessly into the passes of the past.
Sunday and twiddlng my thumbs. But it’s not Sunday, it’s Wednesday. It’s Christmas! Celebrated even by us scientific animists, for it arrives just a few days after the winter solstice. We’re inclining toward the sun! That should be solace enough.
Still, I’d like to get back to work — back to feeling I’m a part of this place, not an irreplaceable part, mind, but a part — a part who writes all day Monday and Tuesday mornings, who plays tennis Wednesday mornings, writes a column on Wednesday afternoons, and who interviews people and goes to games the rest of the week. I’d like to get back to a simulacrum of having an ostensible purpose in life. . . . Is tomorrow Monday?