Monday is what day?

      I have a lunch date expressly scheduled for Monday. It will begin before noon, and I’m hoping we will hang out for the rest of the day.

      If it has to end because my lunch partner has to return home or go to work or has some other feeble excuse, I will go to the movies. Maybe I’ll see “A Complete Unknown” again or maybe, if I really want to stretch it out, I’ll go see the interminable “Wicked” for a second time.

      Then I’ll go get a bite. And maybe go for a walk. Or go get a drink in a bar without TV screens if such a place still exists.

      What I mean is, I’ll do anything to avoid Monday’s inauguration.

      I know I should pay attention. Tuning out should not be an option because we all have to face the awful reality, come to grips with where we are. We all need to know, I guess, what we will be dealing with for the next four years. Maybe hearing his words, seeing the images, will, somehow, make it more real and fortify us or energize us, give us strength for the battles ahead.

      But the juxtaposition of the inauguration falling on the same January 20, this Monday, as Martin Luther King Day, nevertheless makes me question one of Rev. King’s oft-quoted sayings. Are we so sure, now, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”?

      Sure, the point of the quote is that change takes a long time but it ultimately does arrive. But how long is long? Has eight years been long enough? Are four more years long enough? When will that bending finally happen? At my age, frankly, I don’t know how much longer I can wait for it.

      Back in 2008, if we all can remember back that far, we thought that we could detect at least the beginnings of that curvature. We were, indeed, as it turns out, greatly premature.

      Now, on Monday, we will be confronted with the sense that after all the hope, all the work, we are not just back where we were, we’re further away than at any time we can remember.

      So, come Monday, I’ll tune out. I will do that despite Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter telling us not to tune out and reminding us of the importance of tuning in and “that this is not the time for ignorance.” I will do that despite Martin Luther King’s son telling us “we must keep moving forward.”

      I’ll try to move forward. I’ll tune back in, pretty soon, I’m reasonably sure. But not this Monday, not this inauguration day, not this new president. Like many of us, I just need the break.