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Category: time

Q4

Q4

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I believe this is my shortest blog title ever, though not my shortest blog post … at least I don’t think it will be!

It dawned on me the other day that I’m starting to think in quarters. Not 25-cent quarters, but business-year quarters. This is in part because I work for a nonprofit organization that talks of quarters, and I attend all-staff meetings that have recently begun happening four times a year rather than more often and more randomly.

And it was at that meeting, with its talk of the Q3 just ending and the Q4 to come, that I thought … hmmm, this is different: thinking in quarters rather than single months.  It’s perfect for the speeding up of time that seems to be more and more the subliminal topic of my days.

But it is also a convenient way to frame time, to chunk it up, so to speak. And although in one way it makes time speed up (already in the fourth quarter!), in another it makes it slow down (there are three months to measure instead of just one). It’s yet another way to live our lives … and I’m always looking for those.

Rock On!

Rock On!

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Last night we went to hear my cousin Marty’s band, Rockville Station, play the hits of the 70s and 80s at a dive bar in Bethesda. They opened with “I Feel the Earth Move,” an apt tune since I was sitting close enough to the stage that I could fill my insides move with each beat.

Once I’d adjusted to this strange phenomenon, I sat back and enjoyed the show. Here were people my age and older rocking the night away with a lead singer belting out the old tunes and, in a break, introducing her parents to the crowd. They were visiting from Hawaii and had to be in their 90s. The drummer, which turned out to be her husband, looked a little like the angel in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” His face had the same innocent rapture as Clarence’s did when he showed George Bailey his vintage copy of Tom Sawyer. But unlike Clarence, he was so intense that he broke one of his drumsticks during a long riff.

Marty, who played guitar and sang, was one of the younger ones on the stage. Who knew he had these talents? He wore a white cowboy-style shirt and confessed before the show went on that he had once dreamed of being a country-western singer.

Here are people following their bliss. They have day jobs, of course, but they also have alternative lives where they can … rock on.

Waiting Time

Waiting Time

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A return to the hospital. It doesn’t matter which one. Inside, they are all the same: a world of their own, bright of light and cool of air. If you’re lucky, you find a quiet corner to wait. It will be near an electrical outlet and away from a vent, because when air is 63 degrees, it’s better if it’s not blowing in your face.

You will get busy with the work you brought, not only because it must be done but also because it tethers you to the outside world, a world that vanishes the minute you enter the lobby with its quiet hush. 
There will be no clocks on display in the waiting room. At the nurse’s station, however, a large round analog version with numbers written in a clear black font looms serenely over the scene. 
You realize then that clocks are signs of power. Those who have them are those who are responsible to them, those who have something to do. You, on the other hand, are only waiting. 
Simple Gift

Simple Gift

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One of the simple gifts, a gift that doesn’t always seem like a gift but sometimes a drudgery, is waking up every morning. The weekend wake-ups are best, of course, unforced and un-alarmed as they are. But even the weekday ones, rushed and bolt-upright, are proof we wake to live another day.

A good thing? It doesn’t always seem that way. But mornings are the exception even when there’s general gloominess afoot. There is something about a morning, and especially this crystalline one I’m experiencing right now, that makes me glad to be alive.

I’m not going to analyze this too much — or second-guess myself for being a soppy optimist.

I’m just going to enjoy it.

(Morning light in the garden, late June. Alas, the coneflowers aren’t looking this good now.) 

An Aquarian Exposition

An Aquarian Exposition

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It was three days of peace and music, revolutionary for some, a peak experience. It was to my generation what the beginning or end of World War II was to my parents. A seminal moment. That by which others are measured.

In the last few days I’ve read about Woodstock, watched a documentary, listened to the voices of those who were there, learned much about it that I didn’t know.

I’m struck by several points, which many people may already have learned and processed, but which feel fresh to me this morning.

It was almost completely noncommercial. Due to a last-minute change of venue, organizers realized they only had time to complete the stage or the fencing — and they chose the stage. They declared Woodstock a free concert early on. There was almost no merchandise for sale at the concert, which means the value it retains comes primarily from the music (and the documentary film released the next year) and the experience itself.

It was by young adults, for young adults, and it happened in an era when young adults had far more autonomy and freedom than they do now. It seemed like fully half of the concert-goers I heard on this morning’s C-SPAN call-in show were 16 or 17 at the time. “Your parents let you go by yourself?” the announcer asked, aghast. Of course!

Most of all, I’m struck by the seemingly impossible fact that it happened 50 years ago. And that is what ultimately unites the baby boomer generation with all that have come before. Time passes, bodies age — but spirits stay (at least we hope) forever young.

(Poster image courtesy Wikipedia)

Second-Hand Rain

Second-Hand Rain

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An early walk this morning into a moist and muggy landscape, breathing steam — or what felt like it.

There were puddles beside the road and the leaves were gleaming from last night’s dousing. We’ve been humid for days, but rain-fed humidity is different somehow, less oppressive, cleaner.

It wasn’t until the end of the stroll that I saw the second-hand rain. A brisk breeze was stirring the high branches of the oaks and sending down a spray of drops that caught the sun and shone there. It was last night’s precipitation recycled beautifully in the morning light. I walked through it as if through an illuminated mist.

It was a beautiful way to start the day. But now I’m dashing inside from moment to moment trying to dodge the second-hand rain … which is landing lightly on my computer keyboard as I try to write this post.

Weekend’s End

Weekend’s End

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Usually I celebrate the beginning of the weekend. Tonight I celebrate the end.

Well, maybe not celebrate, but savor.  Because I don’t want it to end. I want it to continue.

It was well-balanced: There was time with family and friends, time to read and write, walk and stretch, mow and weed, cook and clean.

What more do I want?

More of the above.  That’s all.

Gains and Losses

Gains and Losses

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Over the weekend I started reading about the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, which we will celebrate next month. One of the tributes was in Parade, which bills itself “the most widely read magazine in America.”

I couldn’t help but notice how thin this most widely read magazine is. And this got me thinking about what we have lost in the 50 years since humans first stepped foot on the moon — in particular the rich print culture that has been slowly dying during the last two (three?) of those decades.

I’m a print girl from way back, and though I quite happily ply my trade in a mostly-web way these days, I miss the heft and gravitas of ink on paper. I miss the smell of it and the feel of it, the weight of it in my hands.

I suppose you could draw a line from rocket technology to the waning of print. After all, the information age was in part launched by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). But that’s not where I’m going with this.

I’m merely musing that our technological gains come with quality-of-life losses. And I don’t want us to forget about them.

(A small printing press, from an exhibit at the Museum of the Written Word in May 2013.) 

Long Twilights

Long Twilights

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I read in the newspaper today that we are not only in a period of long days and short nights but also in a period of long twilights, which occur around the summer solstice.

I learned in this article that there is something called “astronomical twilight,” which only ends when the last glint of light leaves the sky. Last night that was 10:33 p.m. And this morning the light was back at it by 3:43 a.m.

Most of us can’t discern such minute shadings of gray. But they are there. And they are longer now than at any other time of year.

Fresh Starts

Fresh Starts

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The rain moved out overnight and left behind a bright breezy morning. As the wind blows you can see the underside of the leaves, and that creates an even more varied palette of green. I finished a big work project yesterday and am catching my breath from that. It feels like something new is beginning.

I like to think about all the little fresh starts we are given in a lifetime. Of course, there are the big ones: new schools, new jobs, new loves. And then the really big ones, births and deaths. But in between there are countless others: new weeks or weekends, visiting a friend we haven’t seen in years, taking a trip and returning from one, finishing a book that sets the mind a spinning.

These little beginnings are the freshets of regular existence, burblings-up from the wellspring of grace that is there all along but is often forgotten.