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Category: time

Empty Corner

Empty Corner

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The living room is larger today. Wing chairs are back in their usual places, flanking the grandfather clock. It’s easier to reach books on the far shelves, and plants can stretch and breathe. 

What’s missing is the Christmas tree, fragrant and bedazzled. The tree that blocked the bookshelves and required major furniture rearranging. The tree that bore the weight of glass globes, tin stars and ceramic angels with grace and dignity. 

This morning I moved toward the far corner of the living room to turn on the tree lights, as I have been every day for more than three weeks. I was ready once again to be bathed only in its reds, greens and blues. 

Then I remembered, the corner is empty, the tree is gone. This morning, I sit in its shadow.

Snow Day

Snow Day

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We had to wait a week or so, but we finally got our white Christmas. 

In a weather reversal that matches anything in recent memory, we went from the balmy 60s yesterday to snow, sleet and cold today, with several inches of white stuff on the ground and more on the way.

I always think of snow as this blog’s true home. A Walker in the Suburbs began in a snow storm and flourished in one. It might not have come into existence at all were it nor for the windfall of time that flowed from Snowmaggedon.

Now snow is endangered, snow days, too. A work-at-home world does not grind to a halt just because we can’t scrape off the cars and drive to the office. A major disadvantage of telecommuting, in my opinion. 

Who doesn’t need some days when the world goes away? Snow will give us those, if we let it. 

Gliding Smoothly

Gliding Smoothly

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What is this urge to declutter, to glide simply and smoothly into the new year? Last evening I felt a sudden need to tidy up my desktop. Into the trash went receipts for orders already delivered, backup copies of documents already submitted.

This morning I’m checking streaming entertainment accounts, wondering if I can shed any of them. Perhaps the doubling-down of a pandemic is not the time to have fewer entertainment options, though, so I’ve left them temporarily in place. 

Of course, the tidying that really needs to happen isn’t virtual; it’s the all-too-real piles of papers and files, the boxes of old clothes and bins of toys that I can no longer say I’m “holding for the grandchildren.” The grandchildren are here and they won’t be needing any armless Barbies, thank you very much.

Getting rid of all that stuff, I’m afraid, will have to wait till 2022. 

(These mallards will have no trouble gliding smoothly into the new year.)

Sic Transit

Sic Transit

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Because our new bird, Toby, is a hungry critter and eats more than his cage-mate, Alfie, he also makes more of a mess. Seeds pile up in the bottom of the cage, other stuff, too. I find myself cleaning the bird cage far more frequently than I used to. Which means I’m thinking about the transitoriness of journalism.

The opening of the late, great television show “Lou Grant,” starring the late, great Ed Asner, begins with a bird chirping in a tree, the tree being felled to make paper, presses rolling as the newspaper is printed, then back to a chirping bird again as the day-old newspaper is used to line the bottom of a cage.

Back when I only dreamed of being a journalist, I used to watch this show. I ended up writing for magazines instead of newspapers, but the dream remained, and largely was fulfilled. Watching this show again reminds me of how it felt at the beginning, the irony and the gallows humor and even the nobility of it all.  But always among these feelings was an awareness of how fleeting it all was,. No matter how precious the words and how important the topic, the next day, they would be covered with husks and feathers.

Now more than eight out of ten of Americans obtain their news from digital devices. The daily news cycle has given way to the hourly one. Newspapers may be dying … but the transitoriness remains. Sic transit gloria mundi. Thus passes the glory of the world.
Ticking Clock

Ticking Clock

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As I mentioned yesterday, these are open days. But what I don’t say is that the week between Christmas and New Years has usually been open for me. 

It was open when I was writing for a nonprofit and, before that, for a university. It was open during my freelance career. About the only time it wasn’t was early in my magazine-writing days, when I was a lowly assistant editor and had no accrued vacation time. I still remember how weird it felt to be going into an office the final week of December, even an office in midtown Manhattan. I was supposed to be staring into a fireplace or admiring a Christmas tree, not proofing copy!

Until this year, though, these precious holiday hours came with a price tag, a ticking clock. They always seemed luxuriously long on December 26th and 27th, but by December 29th and 30th, I was always wondering where the time had gone. 

These hours seemed to disappear at lightning speed, far more quickly than ordinary time, and inevitably I had nothing to show for them. That was the point, of course. It’s still the point. Only now the ticking clock has — sort of — disappeared.

Open Calendar

Open Calendar

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A tree, a couch, an open week. These are days when dreaming is possible, when sitting still and doing nothing is not only permissible but almost encouraged. 

School is out, holiday to-dos are to-done. The calendar is open, the tasks complete. Even nature seems to be holding its breath. Autumn behind us, winter yet to truly begin.

Yesterday I watched two old movies and an episode of “The Ascent of Man.” Today I may put away some gifts and do a bit of tidying.

But then again … I may not.

Two Solstices

Two Solstices

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We have one Christmas, one Easter, one Independence Day. But we have two solstices: one for the shortest day and one for the longest.

As I sit here this morning, watching the world slowly lighten, I think about the imminent wisdom of these dual celebrations. You could see one as our pinnacle and one as our nadir. But there is a hopeful message in each, too.

In summer we revel in the long twilight, the early morning, the profusion. In winter we tell ourselves, it’s all up from here. 

We live in the present for one, in the future with the other. Surely we could do with a little of each.

The Wee Hours

The Wee Hours

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It’s too early to speculate on the gifts of the pandemic, but I already have a candidate in mind. It’s sleep! Glorious shut-eye. Hours of deep slumber. With no need to commute, there has been no reason to wake up at 5:30. And for the last seven months, there has been even less incentive to burn the pre-dawn oil.

Or has there been? I love these early hours, and I’ve missed them lately. 

So today when I woke at 4 a.m., I tried for a while to drift back, as I usually do, but when that didn’t happen, I took it as a sign and rose for the day. 

It’s not even 6:30 and I’ve had great gobs of time to read, write and otherwise fritter away the day.

In the wee hours, the world is my oyster. 

Already Advent

Already Advent

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We come now to one of my favorite times in the liturgical year. It’s a short season, one ever more likely to be buried in tinsel and outdoor lighting. It’s the season of Advent, of preparation, of prayers and devotionals.

It is almost lost in this world, buried by frantic list-making and shopping.By nonstop carol radio and the Hallmark Christmas movie channel. Every year I hope the prayer and devotional part wins out. Every year it does not. But Advent is early this year, so maybe it has a chance.

Advent reminds me of medieval stone abbeys, of kneeling on hard surfaces, of chanting the divine office in the wee hours. No doubt informed by once reading The Cloister Walk, a fine book by Kathleen Norris, during early December, but also, I think, by the hymns and carols of my youth. 

Now these are mostly memory, but still captured in a few plaintive melodies — O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, for one. I played it on the piano last night, trying to capture the hope and longing of this fleeting season. 

Of Time and Art

Of Time and Art

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I don’t always explore the Google doodles, but I did today, lured on by the picture of a woman playing a grand piano in a room filled with art and light. 

The woman, I learned, is Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, born on this day in 1805. She’s the sister of Felix, a composer I’ve come to appreciate ever more as the years go on, and was herself a gifted pianist and composer. She composed over 450 pieces of music, including many lieder (songs) and piano works.  As a 14-year-old she could  play 24 Bach Preludes from memory. 

Fanny died of a stroke at the age of 41. Her brother died of the same cause six months later, after composing a quartet in her memory. 

What the musical world gained from these two talented siblings cannot be measured. But what more it would have gained had they lived 200 years later, when they could have been on high blood pressure medication. Of course, had they been born 200 years later, they probably would have been writing rap music. Such is the nature of time and art. 

(Photo: Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s music room in her home in Berlin, courtesy Wikipedia)