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Category: time

Running Late

Running Late

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The morning has come and gone and I haven’t yet written a post. I don’t even have a good excuse. Busy at work, busy at home, but those conditions are hardly unusual.

Sometimes things just don’t get done in time.

Maybe it’s because we’re in the last two weeks of August, Congress is not in session (not that my blog has anything to do with the legislative branch!) and D.C. is in a sort of cloudy haze.

Or maybe it’s because I jumped into other projects earlier than usual.

Whatever the explanation, I’m running late. So I’m posting now, before I’m even later!

Journey Without Maps

Journey Without Maps

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I just started reading a book by this title. It’s written by Graham Greene, whose work I usually enjoy, although not sure about this one. Still, you can’t beat the title.

In fact, the title itself has me thinking. “Journey without maps” sounds so exotic, so adventurous — traveling to a place beyond civilization, where rivers have not been charted, roads not cleared. How many places can we go now that are unexplored, mysterious, limitless in possibility? How many of those places would we want to visit?

Like many titles, this one doesn’t work anymore. Now we would call it “Journey Without A Phone.”

As the map — like the land line, the address book (heck, the book itself) — joins the slide rule and the 8-track player on the road to oblivion, we who remember and cherish these items are embarking on our own journey. And it, too, is a journey without maps.

Earlier Kind of Morning

Earlier Kind of Morning

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As mornings dawn earlier and earlier, these last few cloudy days bring a brief pause, a few days that start as slowly as earlier, more wintry ones.

I love how summer mornings dawn bright and strong, with bird song and sunshine before 6. But I also appreciate the dim, still kind of morning.

The kind that gives you a chance to wake up slowly. The kind we have today.

Time Unbundled

Time Unbundled

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It’s still early in our encounter with the monster storm, but so far it’s no more than a lot of rain and strengthening wind. I expect it will grow worse with the day. To look at a graph of local wind speeds is to see a mountain we’re only just beginning to climb.

But for now it’s a silent morning — or as silent a morning as one can have with two parakeets in the kitchen. Of the noises I must attend to there are none. The pantry is stocked; the batteries are charged.

School is out (including the one where I work), and the government is closed. I’m alone with the dog and a good book. I have no place to go, nothing I must do. This is what I’ve been wanting and needing — time unbundled and unbound.

Up and Out

Up and Out

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The colors drew me outside earlier than I’d planned to go. Oranges and reds on the horizon, or what I could see of the horizon through our trees. The sky was firing up, and it was time to walk.

I moved eastward as if by instinct, following the sun. By the time I’d made it to the corner, though, the sky was already draining into blue, so brief was this morning’s brilliance.

But still, it was enough to drag me from the house into a stiff and uncertain wind, to begin the outside part of the day before I was entirely ready for it. Not altogether a bad idea.

There is something to be said for spontaneity, for lack of hesitation, for being moved by beauty. Not moved as in touched, but literally moved. Propelled to lace up the shoes, open the door, step outside.

Not every time, but often enough, the day is changed just by entering it.

Island Time

Island Time

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It’s after 11 and I feel like I should be somewhere. The beach, maybe? Turns out I’ve already been there — to watch the sunrise early this morning. For most of my almost two-hour walk (I always do this — walk so far to one end of the strand that it takes me forever to get back) it was just me and the shorebirds.

And when I returned, a book beckoned. I just now finished it, looked up and noticed the time.

Remember, you’re on “island time,” the inn brochure says. But isn’t “island time” absence of time? Or transcendence of time?

Today, I’ll take either one.

Split Seconds

Split Seconds

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Into the torpor of a muggy Washington summer, where it doesn’t much matter whether you saunter down the street in 20 minutes or 10, comes news from a place where every second counts.

“Americans miss out on a men’s eight medal by 0.3 of a second,” screams one headline, describing the time that separated the U.S. men’s rowing team from a bronze medal.  Or, a more positive example, swimmer Nathan Adrian surprised everyone by pushing past the Australian, French and Brazilian favorites to win gold in the men’s 100-meter freestyle — by .01 second.

We watch sports for the drama and the fun, to marvel at what the human body is capable of. But do we also watch because time is compressed? The slow-moving outcomes of our own sometimes tedious lives are sped up in the pool and on the playing fields. In competition, as in books and movies, we get to see how it all ends.

Last Day, First Day

Last Day, First Day

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Last day of school, first day of summer. The weight of the world would slip from my shoulders. Time stood still, and days were warm and without purpose. There would be cool shady mornings and long lighted evenings. There would be watermelon and iced tea and potato salad;  filmy cotton dresses and new Keds that I’d get dirty right away.

And later, when the children were young, there was their joy to witness, the shaving cream fights at the bus stop on the last day (see above), the creek wading and romps in the woods, the road trips to Kentucky and Indiana and Montana and Maine. Summer was a time to put the world aside. Now the world pushes its way into every season.

One daughter packs for Africa, another is about to be a senior in college, the youngest a senior in high school. Time didn’t stand still after all.

Waking Up

Waking Up

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Up and out early. Moisture fills the air and glows in the lamplight. I play some Gabrielli but it’s too loud for this delicate time of day. I try Dan Fogelberg’s “To the Morning.” Ahhh; that’s better.

I consider turning off the music entirely and listening to the birds. They’re waking up and singing lustily. But the music is good, too. In fact, it sounds a lot like the birds, has the same gradual crescendo.

There are few cars on the street at this time of day, and the ones I see drive sleepily, as if they, too, are just waking up. The day seems to be holding its breath.

On the main road, cars are more numerous and faster. I ease into a trot. The tall grass is wet as I brush by it. Time now for louder music. “Day by Day,” a sung prayer.  I’m fully awake now. Ready to come home, touch the keyboard, write.

After Dinner

After Dinner

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An evening walk. A neighbor and her granddaughter. The girl’s mother was a girl herself when we moved in. We’ve lived here long enough for the child to become the parent. The little girl wore pink, and she whirled herself around in a circle as she swung a stick over her head. The days they are long for her, and the years, they stretch ahead endlessly.

Meanwhile, the grandmother plants annuals around a tree. She talks softly to the little girl. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, only see their heads bowed together in conversation. I inhale a faint whiff of cigar smoke, whether from the girl’s grandfather or from recalling my own, I couldn’t tell you.

It was that kind of evening, a brilliant sunset in the making, a bank of clouds that looked like a wave eddying around a breakwater, the air still and heavy. The past and present packed together in an after-dinner walk, the most portentous kind of stroll, spilling over with the motions of the day and the dying of the light. The fullness that passes for joy, that is deeper than joy.