Browsed by
Category: time

A Whirl

A Whirl

Comments 0 Comment

The last few days of paid employment are flying away like paper pages from a calendar in an old movie, the gimmick directors used to show time passing. Which is to say quickly.

But that’s now. A few months ago time was hanging around my ankles. I kept paging forward in my desk diary, looking at the day I had appointed for notifying management of my decision — it seemed as if it would never arrive. 

So in a way, my experience of time recently has mirrored its journey through our lives: the languid days of childhood, the accelerando of adulthood, the spin-crazy way the pace picks up as we age.

By that reckoning, next week will be quite a whirl. 

Calm Start

Calm Start

Comments 0 Comment

The world outside my office window is brown and green and gray, a palette of soft colors for a foggy morning.

I woke to the sound of an early bird, a cardinal perhaps. But since that first song it’s been still and quiet, a calm start to what I hope is a calm weekend.

It’s time to get caught up on errands both inside and outside the house, time to collect myself before the changes to come.

The Unvoiced

The Unvoiced

Comments 0 Comment

I read an essay over the weekend about the writer Tillie Olsen, whose impact was large though her output was small. It was that last point that comforted and inspired me. And not for the best of reasons. As I contemplate a life soon freed of the day job, I’m already looking for excuses. 

Before, I could always say … gee, I wish I could write more of my own stuff, but I have to work for my living. What will I use for an excuse now? This essay, by A. O. Scott in the New York Times Book Review, provides a blueprint. I’m going to quote liberally from it, because it articulates an exhaustion I’ve long felt but seldom read about. The italics are mine.  

Olsen was a writer her whole life — she died in 2007 — but she didn’t write much. Not because she was blocked or lacked material. The blockage — the obligation of earning a living and tending children, the “immersion” in caring that was a source of fulfillment as well as frustration — was the subject matter. The silence that surrounds those stories is its own kind of statement.

Is there a place in literature — in our canons and course listings, in our criticism and theory — for unwritten work? … Literary ethics prompts us to attend to the unheard and the marginal; curiosity or impatience with the same old stuff sends us in search of the forgotten and the neglected. But what kind of attention do we owe — what kind of attention is it even possible to pay — to the unvoiced?

I’d have to go back to an essay by Ursula Le Guin, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Writes the Books,”  to find words that so perfectly describe the unique challenges facing the woman who raises children, makes a home, holds a job and dares call herself a writer. 

It’s a topic I soon hope to explore with renewed relish — or at least, that’s the plan.

Early Walk

Early Walk

Comments 0 Comment

There was time for an early walk this morning, a chilly start to a day that has already warmed considerably. But a few hours ago, I bundled up and crunched along the gravel berm, thinking about the hours soon to be unfolding.

It had been a while since I walked early, preferring the lunch-time stroll when temperatures are below freezing. But with warmer air and earlier dawns, that is shifting.

The day is different when you walk in the morning. It stretches out endlessly and without complications.  At noontime, the work of the day is very much in my mind. But the morning belongs to the half-awake brain and the thoughts that weave in and out of it.

Steady and Clear

Steady and Clear

Comments 0 Comment

When I woke at 5:40, morning had begun. It was seeping in around the window shades and filling the room not with light but with something that wasn’t darkness, either.  A vague shift of shadow, a sharper awareness of shapes.

I lay there a while, thinking it was still dark enough to sleep and that would also be a good way to start a Tuesday, also, perhaps better than jumping out of bed. But the morning won out. There was an insistence to it: Come on, get up. What are you waiting for?

Once downstairs, the morning fulfilled its promise, putting out a steady clear light from the east, which I stationed myself to watch by sitting in the big blue chair. It’s been a light fest ever since, a treat we can continue to enjoy as days lengthen and expand. 

A long winter, an even longer year. The light is welcome. 

Stop Time

Stop Time

Comments 0 Comment

The rain fell and froze last night, and now the bamboo is bowing under the weight of it. Poor bamboo! It’s a nuisance in so many ways, but it forms a lovely screen for the deck, so I hope the day warms fast enough to free the gangly plant before it snaps.

Ice storms lack the beauty of snowfalls. They hold within themselves the hard edges of winter and none of its softness. 

Still, there is beauty in the glinting and there is wonder in the way droplets are trapped in poses they had hours ago. Ice stops time in its tracks. 

Tick Tock Tick…

Tick Tock Tick…

Comments 0 Comment

I write to the sound of one clock ticking. That would be a lot of ticks in some houses, but in this house, it means we’re down by two clocks. It’s the cuckoo clock this time, the cuckoo I mourned in an essay long ago.

A year ago, when I was home alone for a couple weeks, I remember writing in my journal about the sound of three clocks ticking. It was like jumping rope double-Dutch or playing all three contrapuntal parts of a Bach fugue, the satisfying finger-twisting struggle of it all. 

It isn’t difficult to vibrate to one chord, to rock to one beat. I like to think that having multiple ticks and tocks keeps me limber, aurally speaking.

Time for the cuckoo clock repair shop.

Christ the King

Christ the King

Comments 0 Comment

Today is the feast day of Christ the King, the last Sunday of the liturgical year. But for me, Christ the King will always be, first and foremost, a school — “CKS,” my earliest alma mater, the place where I learned to read and write, where I got my first crushes on boys, where I arrived most days with a knot in my stomach. 

It was not a feel-good place; most parochial schools were not in those days. It was a bar of Ivory soap and a rough towel, just the basics. There were no counselors, no social workers. If the nuns were unhappy with you, they weren’t above grabbing you by the arm and giving it a firm squeeze.

I remember the scent of wet rubber boots in the cloak room on a rainy day, the smell of vomit and of the detergent used to clean it (I wasn’t the only one who arrived at school with a knot in my stomach). I remember chalk dust and the way the nuns would tuck their arms up their voluminous sleeves, the clicking of the rosary beads they wore clipped to the side of their habits.

A few years ago, when I was visiting Lexington, I went back to Christ the King, strode through the halls, peeked into the classrooms, wandered through the lunchroom, which was where I tried out for cheerleader in seventh grade. “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, All for Christ the King, stand up and holler.” 

Eight years is a long time to spend in a place, especially when those years are your sixth through 13th. Those years throw long shadows; I walk in them still. 

Early to Bed…

Early to Bed…

Comments 0 Comment

Last night, I was in bed reading before 9 p.m. with lights out before 9:30 — which means that when I woke up at 4:30 a.m., as I often do, I gave myself permission to rise and start the day. 

This led to what felt like a revelation: does this mean I should always retire so early? Am I more of a lark than I think I am? 

One morning does not a lifestyle change make. So for now, I’m enjoying today’s head start and hoping I can keep my eyes open long enough to have dinner!

Reclaim the Morning

Reclaim the Morning

Comments 0 Comment

I thought I would write about voting on November 3, 2020, an election day long awaited, long feared. But I figure I’ll have plenty to say about the election tomorrow. 

What strikes me as words-worthy today is the morning, is finding it again in the wreckage of Eastern Daylight Time, discovering its glimmering, shimmering self among the ruins of the warmth and the tattered leaves of autumn. 

Fall-back has given some of us an extra hour to clean the closets and others a welcome roll back to sleep early Sunday morning. 

But for me, it’s been a way to reclaim the morning, regaining what I lost in my quest for more sleep, which are these precious golden hours before the day begins. I’ve been missing those — and now, at least for a few days, I have them again.