Craving Boring

I read this beautiful Charles Simic poem To Boredom and it took me back to a time when my grandmothers were still alive. In particular I remembered my paternal grandmother who carried with her a book of Bengali ghost stories for children when she visited us.

There were some primitive illustrations in the book to aid better comprehension of the spectral action. For the duration of her stay at our home which was usually during my summer holidays, she would read these stories to me like clockwork after lunch. I could not read Bangla but I knew to look for the illustrations to follow the plot line. 

If the stories were meant to scare, they missed the mark by a mile but there was entertainment value and grandma read them in a serious voice to imply that this could be real. I generally proceeded to nap after the story. Those afternoons like the days of Simic's poem were forever. Nothing changed from one to the next. It is as if the clocks are stopped ticking. What I would give today for time so unchanging, uncomplicated and boring today. 

I’m the child of rainy Sundays. 

I watched time crawl 

Like an injured fly 

Over the wet windowpane. 

Or waited for a branch 

On a tree to stop shaking, 

While Grandmother knitted 

Making a ball of yarn 

Roll over like a kitten at her feet. 

I knew every clock in the house 

Had stopped ticking 

And that this day will last forever.