Out of all moments during a week, I believe the beginning of Saturday, and not specifically the mornings, but the time I spend idling about in the first half of the day is what I most look forward to. No day is as distinctly split into two as a Saturday. You wake up with an unmatched relaxation in your heart, and then, you slowly get into the groove of being a person. Then, you get some of the time you gave away to the world during the week back—nothing much, no windfall, just a few hours at best, but that is all we need. And what do I mean by giving the hours away? It is the little contracts we live our lives around: of work, of friendships and family, of love, of society. Every contract requires a little time, and some things require more than you are readily able to give, but then, you draw the short straw and oblige regardless. I reckon that is all it takes to be a person: to give time to everything big or small, like how the rain waters a garden and does not choose sides, or prefer a flower or a tree, like how all fuel stokes all fire and grows it and makes it bolder, like how any amount of change you can spare is worth sparing when someone asks for it. But then, this effervescent time, this window arrives, and I reckon, is often missed if you do not look for it, so I urge you to seek it, to find it and grab it. It is the reprieve we need. It is when I am at my happiest, and if happiest is too strong a word, then I am at my lightest, and no obligation pulls my strings. Perhaps it may not be the same day for everyone, but all this is to say that it does exist—a temporary rending of all fine print you did not read before signing the forms.
And now, as the clock gets on with what it does best, it is closing time. And this bar with no name, this temporal third place, this corner among corners shall now shut itself off for another week. I must pay the bill with these words. And I must get off this chair now. I must honour the terms and conditions of being a person, and visit people, and places. It is, after all, the least we can do. How awful would paradise be if it were the only thing you knew?