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Dead Week
Oh, what a boy day today. Unshaven, wearing my glasses out of the house (!), sneakers, generally unwashed-looking ... I frankly don't care much.
I mention this only to prove that I am not always concerned about the way I look. And to give you an idea of my general lassitude today.
Today is the twenty-eighth of December, which means that we are within Dead Week for the Christian Western world, and anyone else who voluntarily or involuntarily respects that holiday cycle. I was channeling Clio about this on the subway today but she didn't seem to have a whole essay's worth; too bad. But, in a nutshell ....
You remember Dead Week, right? It's the week between the last day of classes and final exams. A week when absolutely nothing is supposed to happen - no scheduled events, activities, et cetera. (At the Institvte, which believes in pain and suffering, Dead Week lasts only one day - but never mind that.) Some people do use Dead Week for its intended purpose - to concentrate on studying - but others use it to give themselves a little breathing space, a pause for the brain to collect itself.
In the Christian Western world, daily life between Christmas and New Year's Day isn't ... quite ... normal. Oh, people sometimes go through the motions. Others don't bother. The kids are usually home from school. Holidays taken at work may vary, but some people abandon the pretense of getting anything done in their semi-deserted offices and just jump ship for a week. Some people, on the other hand, use the relative peace and quiet to finally get some work done. The normal rules are suspended. It's Dead Week.
Clio feels this is a useful concept. I do too. Of course, Clio remembers the Celts and others who believed in a period of several days to a week which belonged to neither the old year or the new, a time which was essentially in limbo and therefore not subject to normal behavior. This is not a new idea.
Clio also wants me to point out that some calendar reform schemes over the ages have done exactly that - solved the problem of extra days (when months are of equal length, you have some extra days left over at the end) by making them sort of a non-time, a Dead Week.
So today I am catching up slowly on email and other tasks, and when I go home I will probably do something entertaining and non-productive. I got a PC Gamer today that reviewed a game I've been eyeing for weeks; gave it top marks. That seems like a pleasant enough thing to do.
If I owe you mail (and I probably do), don't despair. I'll catch up soon. After all, I have three more days of Dead Week left.
© Columbine
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