Morbus diei Lunae

The ancient Babylonians have a great deal for which to answer.

Impatient with the Zen approach to the passage of time, they took it upon themselves to divide it into bite-sized portions.

Why this was deemed necessary remains unclear. Perhaps they had a camel train to catch.

The ancient Egyptians — I’m not sure which of the two groups was more ancient, though no doubt the Babylonians were running the meter at the time — had already come up with the notion of hours, possibly as a means of meeting up for lunch.

This segmentation, I believe (for those of us who are not athletes), would’ve been more than sufficient for our purposes. But the ancient Babylonians couldn’t let it rest there.

In a primordial counterpart to “Are we there yet?”, they insisted on further dividing each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds (which, you have to admit, is a decidedly odd thing to do in a world without watches).

Doubtless, in the days before television, competing as to whose 60-second count would more accurately reflect a true minute was a relatively painless way of passing the time — a pursuit more trivial than even television itself.

Any sane person would’ve been satisfied with the 86 400 seconds allotted to them in your average day. It seems more than generous and, personally, I for one would’ve settled for just 50 000.

But the ancient Babylonians’ thirst for chronometry knew no bounds. When confronted with the finality of the 86 400-second day, they responded with the Mesopotamian version of “Is that all there is?” by coming up with the week.

The week has absolutely no reason to exist. It’s a pure fabrication. A contrivance, but to no end. It speaks to nothing and answers to nobody.

And yet, this simple, indulgent though seemingly harmless innovation was to usher onto the planet one of the most horrific pandemics known to mankind: morbus diei Lunae (or, as we now refer to it, Mondayitis).

Having been a lifelong sufferer from this malady in its most extreme form, I’m only too familiar with its sickening pathophysiology.

The patient retires of a Saturday evening feeling hale and hearty. A great night out with friends, a delicious meal, a nightcap. What could be more emblematic of the joys of a middle class Western lifestyle?

Sunday’s dawn, however, casts its light on a completely different clinical picture.

Upon awakening, the patient is aware of a vague gnawing at the pit of the stomach. Hunger, perhaps? Too much rich food the night before? A touch of alcoholic gastritis?

He rises from the bed and lifts the blind. There is a coldness to the light. A harshness. An unfriendliness. Gone is the enveloping warmth and golden glow of the Saturday afternoon. Sunday takes no prisoners.

Vaguely troubled, the patient tries to reassure himself that all’s well with the world. After all, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, there’s a nice walk to be had along the Yarra, a bit of shopping, reading the latest copy of the New Yorker out on the deck. What could be more relaxing?

The patient enters the kitchen and cuts up some fruit. But the very first slice of melon that hits his stomach wall tells him that all is not well. It sits like a brick, his gut tightening around it with sickening vigour.

He forces a few more mouthfuls, but soon recognises that he has no real appetite.

The walk is pleasant enough, but he finds it almost impossible to be in the moment. A sense of anxiety, foreboding, gathering storm clouds crowd his consciousness.

He is acutely aware of those cursed Babylonian seconds, then minutes, then Egyptian hours trickling at first, then cascading away — leaving an emptiness, increasingly vast. A yawning chasm. The place where security once dwelt.

There is a terrible sense of abandonment. How could this all be taken from me? How could I be so happy one moment, and so bereft the next? How could I rest so comfortably within the bosom of my family today, yet be faced with such a cold, unforgiving, menacing and endlessly demanding world tomorrow?

The abandonment widens and deepens into a massive paroxysm of separation anxiety. Everything I love is here. Within these four walls. This side of Sunday night. Everything I fear is on the other side.

Damn those Babylonians!

By the time I’ve finished toying with my dinner and we’re seated before the TV, I’m in the midst of a full scale panic attack.

Joanna Lumley’s India only exacerbates the sense of separation.

Rake’s antics seem insufferably frivolous and irrelevant. How does he get away with that sort of thing? Doesn’t he realise that most of us are just hanging on by the skin of our teeth?

And then there’s Vera. Can’t concentrate on Vera. And the weather over there is so appalling. It’s depressing. I don’t need that right now.

Then we’re off into distant, dangerous lands once more at the foot of the Himalayas, with Indian Summers. Why does the ABC have this obsession with impossibly arcane travel?

Then a movie. Healing. About a convicted murderer who’s put in charge of rehabilitating injured birds of prey. What right have these entitled creatures to rehabilitation when I lie here in this debilitated, nay crippled state? Oh, to be a bird of prey. To fly away from all this. Never to return. At least, not on a Sunday.

It’s 11:50 pm. Late enough to justify attempting sleep. Sleep — that last resort of the fugitive from life.

I close my eyes, my head still spinning with a thousand dire, premonitory thoughts.

Upon waking the next morning, there is a moment’s gentle hiatus before the full enormity of dies Lunae thunders down upon my brow.

It’s raining outside. The light — what little there is of it — is dull and grey. No bird can be heard to chirp — not even one of prey.

There is not even the pretence of an attempt at breakfast.

The blast of hot water from the showerhead drowns out all else — all else, that is, except the sense of raging inevitability of Monday morning.

I enter the train carriage, already stacked with other patients, their bodies rocking in unison to its motion, imparting to the scene the miasma of victimhood.

I enter the workplace, still cold from an unattended weekend.

Everything is just as it was left on the Friday — a day when the hope and glory of Saturday still lay before me — and I weep for the loss of what once was.

The phone rings and, upon taking this first call, the fever lifts and I am transformatively well again. Until the next Sunday.

The diagnosis of morbus diei Lunae is made on purely clinical grounds. Examination reveals nothing, and neither pathology nor imaging can add anything of value to the diagnostic quest.

Therapeutic guidelines are thin on the ground. In a relapsing remitting disorder of such chronicity, it’s best to be brutally honest with the patient: this malady will virtually cripple you each week. For a day. But there will be no sequelae. No morbidity. No mortality.

And the good news is: there’s a cure!

Retirement!

I can vouch for that.