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Category: time

Routine Morning

Routine Morning

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I’m thinking this morning of routines and the comfort they provide. Filling the pot with water, checking email while it boils, starting this blog as it steeps.

Reach up to open the cabinet above the stove, grab the two boxes (my tea is a blend of decaf choices), warm the pot, pour boiling water over the tea bags, cover the pot with a tea cozy, then wait for the first cup to be strong enough to drink.

Routine motions become muscle memory. They transcend fatigue and despair. They are not flights of fancy, not the spark to light the fire. They are the 99 percent perspiration to the 1 percent inspiration. They are the engines of progress.

Pure Possibility

Pure Possibility

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End of the week. End of ideas? Probably not. They will emerge again, maybe even in a few minutes. But this is the time I have to write, this crazy early time, propelled by sleeplessness to grab the few moments I can reasonably (or not so reasonably) claim.

What is it that makes these morning minutes so sacred? It is, in part, the quiet. Others sleeping. Tea steeping. The duties of the day still a couple of hours away (unless I check work email!).

But it is also a sense of anticipation, of having another day. A day that at this point is still pure possibility, not yet freighted with what might have been.

New Hour, New World

New Hour, New World

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Yesterday I left the office, walked out the door and saw a sky lit from within, clouds shimmering with light and a flock of birds swooping in and out of sight.

It was a different hour, a different light, made possible by the time change. And while it means I leave and return home in darkness, it also means that my walk to Metro takes me by flaming trees, slanting sun and illuminated office windows that reveal what’s inside. Plants and posters, an American flag.

It was a new hour — and because of that — a new world.

Time Travel

Time Travel

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Last night I finished watching the movie “Interstellar.” It’s a long film; I had gotten halfway through it Tuesday evening and finished it up last night. But its length was befitting of its topic, the expansive subject of space and time.

Time, the fifth dimension, the true final frontier. Astronaut Cooper trapped in a box of boxes, able to see his daughter Murphy but unable to reach her, except in code, except, he realizes, through time itself, the watch he gave her before he left on his fantastic voyage to another galaxy.

Farfetched? Of course. But who hasn’t felt trapped in the here-and-now? Who hasn’t yearned to break free from the linearity of our lives? Just a peak at the future. Just a glimpse of the past — long enough to forgive, to restore, to understand.

Running Late

Running Late

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I have a watch with more beauty than brains, a timepiece whose oblong shape distorts the minutes and even the hours. Glance at it quickly and it’s easy to think you’re running late.

But when its strap broke last week I missed it more than I thought I would. Even a vague notion of time is better than no notion at all. I was reduced to taking out my cell phone (usually tucked away in a sleeve of my purse) and glancing at its digital display.

Doing this got me thinking about how much harder it is these days to say “I lost track of time.” Most everyone has a cell phone, and cell phones not only tell you precise minute and hour but they also automatically spring ahead or fall back. What has happened to immersion, to flow, to losing oneself in a task?

My watch is back in business now, but the questions remain.

One Hour

One Hour

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One hour is a pebble in the shoe, the insignificant that will not be silenced. Put in perspective it is nothing, this shift of time. With all the great world’s spinning, how could it be important? It is only a matter of accounting, right? A shift from one column to another.

But so exquisitely tuned are we, so finely adapted to familiar segments of darkness and light, that one hour brings a yelp of pain or a cry of joy. Sandpaper-eyed mornings, loose-limbed evenings. A stark jump to the cold days of early spring.

The black ice on the driveway and the snow on the deck makes it hard to take this hour seriously. This hour will not catapult us to spring. It is the alarm set too early, tugging us to ragged wakefulness in the middle of the night.

Morning Happens

Morning Happens

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When I work at home I can see the morning happen, can see night peel off around the edges.

No dramatic sunrise today, just steadily less dark. A lighter shade of gray and the tall oaks emerging from it, first the trunks, then the large limbs and finally a crowd of branches at the top.

Only now can I see the houses, three from this vantage point — gray, tan and brick. Only now do I notice the dark fringe around the horizon, the woods on the far side of the road.

But I keep my eyes trained on the sky, on the vast ceiling above us that finally gives way to day.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

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The candy is hidden so there will be some left for tonight. There’s a plump pumpkin for carving. And the yard is covered in crisp brown leaves.

I took this photograph at a pumpkin patch Suzanne and I visited three years ago. I remember even then the preciousness of time with her. (Peace Corps was already in her plans.) The preciousness of that time, telescoped as it was then, and especially as it is now during her leave, is just a compressed version of all the precious times we spend with those we love.

The ripe fruits of autumn remind me how important it is to store up those times. Store them up as a plant does, capturing sunlight, soil and rain.

Midday Rush

Midday Rush

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It’s what I’m in today, this moment. Despite best intentions, the silent prayer before rising, the attempts at perspective. Some days, even gorgeous ones like today, even early in the week, are stretched before they begin.

I knew my day was headed for this when I couldn’t open my office door because of all the page proofs stuck beneath it. Knew it when I saw the lines I’d have to cut from several pages. (Strange and old school to be saying this in digital space, where lines don’t much matter — though characters do.)

Just barely time now to lift my head, make the list, complete each task as carefully and methodically as I can, then move on.

Morning Salute

Morning Salute

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I write from the deck, early though it is. I want to be with the morning as it slowly unfolds. Want to be with those first birds — the bold? the restless? — as they greet the day.

It feels like rain. The air is full of moisture and a steady breeze flows in from the west. The early storm is an aberration and for that reason exciting. We are accustomed to the blistering heat that collapses of its own weight, that can only be released in a burst of sound and light and rain. But the morning storm is a riddle to me. Has it been brewing all night? Is it left over from the heat of yesterday?

Whatever the case, the dawn continues to unfold, shapes slowly emerging from the backyard, first the azalea bush and then its individual leaves. First the day lilies and then their buds. I can even see through the backyard and across the street now. Two red oaks, their tall trunks like masts, emerge from the darkness to salute the new day.