Rien

There were a lot of people born on this day, and quite a few of them were fairly famous. Even a couple would be in the running for our hero prize. I mean Clarence Darrow, David Ricardo, Aldophe Thiers, and several others might just on your average day make it onto the hero podium. I suppose today is not my average day, although it has not had any disaster strike, or good fortune arrived that would mark it as anything other than an average day. Perhaps today is an average day, and average days lack heroes. By definition they are average, neither too high, nor too low to stand out in a lifetime crowded full of similar, average days. Therein lies the rub, today will eventually disappear into the mists of memory (or would it be non-memory?). Nothing of any importance, in my opinion, happened today. And though, the day has a few hours left to run, I doubt anything reportable will happen in the time remaining to this day. This is a non-heroic day, a day indistinguishable from thousands of other days, in which I live, eat, breathe, sleep, and accomplish nothing of note. It arrived outside my window right on time, just like it companions, yesterday, and tomorrow, have, and (I assume) will. Nothing heralded its arrival, nor with anything mourn its loss. I could have, just as easily, slept through this entire day, and there is some theory that I might have. Maybe I am a sleepwalker, or an automaton that, upon being wound up by my owner, performs certain mundane tasks everyday with disturbing regularity. Austrian field marshals and Ottoman sultans have called this day their birthday, but for me it is nothing. It is 24 hours that have to be "got through" on my way to starting the work week tomorrow. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course, it is useless to lament this day, and I should really be trying to get something useful out of these particular 24 hours of relative freedom that I have been given. I did try, I was calmly sitting on the deck in my back yard, and reading until I casually looked up at the "scenery" of my backyard. While other people would point out the beauty of the blooming red ruffle bushes with their colourful flowers, and the fullness of the shade tree over head, and admire the freshly cut lawn, all I saw was the stump that I have to dig up, the leaves on that shade tree that until fall arrives, and I will need to rake them, produce some odd sap that is currently ruining my deck. I see that freshly cut grass in a week, after a couple of rain showers, being knee high, and in need of being freshly mowed again. It was enough to drive me inside where I can glance at the walls of my living room that are in desperate need of painting, and I wonder again how drunk I must have been to have purchased a house. Maybe this is what my day has become, sitting around la grand maison, and pondering all of the niggling, little things I need to paint, cut, repair, build, or have removed. This is a tragedy worthy of some obscure Greek. I certainly hope that my fate is different, that fate is not conspiring with the HG channel to turn me into some sort of slave to my freehold. Maybe in the six hours or so I have left before I decide to sleep this day off, something of importance, or interest will happen that will retrieve this day from the dustbin of history, but I am not cautiously optimistic. All I can do is, with apologies to my reader(s), inform you/them that for today, April 18th, there is no hero of the day.