Sunday?  I awakened as if in a time warp.  My conscious mind was oriented toward the coming day at the office.  Waking at 6AM, I left the house for Starbucks with the dawn barely showing to the east.  In my dissociation, a day was missing.  I glanced at the newspaper rack at Starbucks and thought it strange that the Saturday edition of the NY Times was still in place, a two-day old edition.  That made the sense of “being out of time” even worse.  I concluded that a major failure had occurred with the paper delivery service.

Only as I concentrated, with coffee cup in hand,  reading a difficult text, The Use of Bodies by Giorgio Agamben, did the sense that today is in fact, Sunday, slowly rise in awareness.  As I worked, struggled to follow Agamben’s detailed analysis of the Greek terms for use, and for seizing-hold, and of handiness—did my body/mind recognize that I was temporally in a day called “Sunday.”

Problem solved.  Yes and no.

It is not as if “being out of time” is an abstract matter.  I would actually have driven to the office, and blown off the plans that Laura and I have for this day, if I had not come to my senses.  The consequences would have been material, and certainly would have entailed regrettable effects .  Apologies would’ve been called for.

My experience parallels the theme of Agamben’s, The Use of Bodies.  It is only through our use of the world, our concrete, actual engagement with things around us, and with people, that we realize, come to know our situatedness, in space and in time.   There is no other way.  We handle, engage, pick-up as a tool what is at hand, and quite mysteriously, we discover ourselves and where we fit in.

I have an old, rather diminutive ball peen hammer that belonged to my dad.  The handle is darkened by time, by absorption of the oils and the grime of the work bench, and the head is rounded, worn by the uncountable occasions of use by my father.  Dad established/discovered his place, and his identity by handling and using this little tool.  I  prize and will take care of this hammer in order to pass it on to my son.

A final thought, that turns to politics.  I caught a article on the front page of the Saturday NY Times that detailed candidate Kavanaugh’s Thursday rant excoriating the Democrats for plotting against him.  He even managed to include the Clintons.  Certainly from this unhinged partisan tirade alone, he does not belong on the supreme court.

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

I grasp the handle, and feel the heft of my fathers hammer, and in similar fashion as I consider Kavanaugh’s words and demeanor, I come to know my place, and know his place in the world.