Art Heals: Hump Day

As we are all working to flatten the curve, can there still be such a thing as hump day?  You remember that Wednesday nickname that carried hope for weary workers navigating deserts of toil and strife.  The promise that there were only two more days left before we reached the oasis of the weekend, that glimmering space of sleeping in, no emails, and bottomless mimosas.
In this time of WFH (Working From Home) one day seems to merge into another in a miasma of chores, screens, dirty dishes and the endless hunt for toilet paper.  Is hump day a mere mirage?
We can feel as though we are treading an endless pathway, getting we know not where.  Trudging up one sand dune only to see an endless multitude of dunes ahead.  Exhausting.
So of course, this made me think of famous desert explorers. 
Ibn Battuta, born at Tangier in 1304, set out as a young man on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He subsequently traveled for 27 years and 75,000 miles, and climbed more than his share of dunes, I am sure.
“He was the only medieval traveler known to have visited the lands of every Muslim ruler of his time. Battuta travelled the world including Jordan, Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Tanzania, Crimea, Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Assam, Bengal, Malaya, Indonesia, China, Spain and the West African states.” He wrote The Travels of Ibn Battuta, a fascinating book that details his observations on architecture, landscapes and customs.
And then there is Lady Hester Stanhope, a shall we say, unusual personality, but a very persistent one.  In the early 1800s she visited the city of Palmyra, taking the route through the desert dressed as a Bedouin and taking with her a caravan of 22 camels to carry her baggage. (A woman after my own heart.) She pioneered modern archeological analysis, and to her credit, resisted the looting of her finds in Palestine, despite pressure to take them to England.
OK, enough history.  Back to hump day.  I cite these examples to address our own metaphorical treks through the unending deserts of bad news, inclement weather, financial worries, boredom and anxiety as this virus dictates our lives for the foreseeable future.  Let’s try to create our own hump day.  Mark Wednesday in some way—cook a different breakfast.   Pick out a shirt that you only wear on Wednesday.  Save a favorite video to binge watch only on Wednesday nights.  Anything to celebrate that you have gotten halfway through another week of confinement, that you will be able to make it  to the weekend,  when you will be able to cross off another week and be proud of your skill in conquering this new landscape, ultimately leading your family and friends safely to the oasis at the end.
So, I couldn’t help myself—here is a lovely painting of camels, painted in the traditional idiom, titled Early Morning, Prepared to Leave, by Iraqi artist Hashim Al-Samarraie, who still lives in Baghdad.  Art Heals.