Sundays

A journalist needs a hook but blogs are different and are meant to be spontaneous. I prefer theme and metaphor but not sure what I will say today, an ordinary Sunday. I saw Time Traveler's Wife last night. I had a hard time with the book, overly complex and circular, but I appreciated the sentiment and the focus on the wife's journey, a life-long love affair without tether. Truly day to day. The movie is more linear in presentation, and the focus seems to me to be more the traveler, his lonely journey, with only the connection to his wife to tether him to himself. Interesting concept. How many men see themselves as part of the whole of their marriage? How many see themselves through their wives' eyes? The film lacked the punch of the book, a common refrain, but pleasant and frankly Eric Bana in the buff is reason enough.

Last week I read the soon to be published "Homer and Langley" by E. L. Doctorow, one of the best, which fictionalized the lives of the Colyer brothers of New York City who lived increasingly reclusive and ultimately paranoid lives, sadly exiling themselves from even the few people who populated their worlds and withdrew into a private lonely world from which they never emerged. So sad, exquisitely told.

Today I drift. A frequent phenomena of Sundays. Yes, I start Sundays with a walk or Pilates class, and a reading of the New York Times, ritual more than schedule. I often clean. I do laundry if it hasn't been done on Saturday, which it was this week. I check email. I join a new MeetUp group [ex-east Coasters, mostly New Yorkers, what a fun idea.] I finish up last week's New Yorker, making me almost caught up [the stories remain folded down for late nights.] I will soon start reading a new novel, always a special moment. Ah, what to choose.

The sun is shining brightly today. I should set my face in that direction for a while, get a bit of color. I look a little pale these days, not sure why. I have spoken with a few East Coast friends, another week-end ritual. They are well, busy, productive, thoughtful. My daughters are busy and well, perhaps Dana and I will find time for a phone chat today. Later this afternoon, I will attend a wine tasting/art show benefit for Breast Cancer Angels, who helped, among many others, my friend/artist Sue Thompson pay her bills and navigate her way through treatment, and thankfully, she is well past it all and painting her best work.

I will return to bury myself in a book or perhaps a DVD, a makeshift dinner and an hour with 60 Minutes. And when I chronicle the meanderings of an ordinary Sunday, I see it is filled with connections - friends and family, passions and pastimes. I am not so much flaneur as tethered to the comforts of a life largely filled, even in these quiet moments, with good things and good people, albeit often from a distance.

And therein lies the theme - we enjoy the pleasures of connection, to each other, to our passions and longings, and to the sheer delight and privelege of a lazy Sunday. Cheers...