January 6, 2007

TIME RELEASED

We never remember days, only moments.- Cesare Pavese

When I think back over the year I feel rich from all the wonderful moments I can relive. Like the December morning when I awoke to find a spectacular scene out my window. The sun was just rising and the mist from the lake was wrapping the trees in frosting. It was so magical I had to go out and look around the bay and down the lake to take it all in.
It's amazing how time stands still in those moments of awe.
Then there was the morning I awoke to an unsettling email. A good friend and teacher, after a recent diagnosis, died from cancer. He taught me about life and showed me how I was avoiding my responsibilities. Recently I understood what he meant and my life has blossomed ever since. Funny, they say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. It seems now like the opposite is true too: when the student is ready, the teacher disappears. In letting go of my need for him, his spirit has suffused me with love and guidance for all time.
And this morning I awoke to kisses. My giant puppy was licking my face at the same time my unshaved husband was kissing me, and I couldn't stop laughing. What a funny, crazy feeling – so much joy from such a little tender moment.
Time is such a strange phenomenon. I find myself asking the same question repeatedly, especially now: where does the time go? But of course time doesn't go anywhere because it's just an illusion, one we've created to give form to our reality.
In science they talk about the time-space continuum because time is a measure of the earth's movement around the sun – one rotation we name as one day, and 365 rotations we name as one year.
Poets consider time differently:
When Time who steals our years away Shall steal our pleasures too, The mem'ry of the past will stay, And half our joys renew.- Thomas Moore, 1779-1852

ticking my life away, indifferent clocks everywhere - Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

A philosopher said this:
The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. - Jean Paul Sartre
And here's what two composers have learned:
The purpose of art is to stop time.- Bob Dylan
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.- Hector Louis Berlioz

Time also has a way of converting something that was perceived to be bad into something that can be perceived as good, like loosing a job you thought was so important then finding a new one that better suits your passion.
My father used to say when we were struggling with something: this too shall pass. His experience taught him to let go of that which he couldn't change, because over the course of time it loose its importance.

Time heals.

Time is all so fleeting. Where did the summer go? Where did the fall go? Where did the holidays go?

Then out on the trail today I was thinking about time and noticed that when I worried about something, when I got wrapped up in fear, time grinded to a halt. Yet when I shifted the worry to wonder, I moved into a more creative mode and life began to flow again. I realized then that when I was feeling like a victim, time caged me in, but when I was being creative, time had no hold on me. Fascinating stuff.

So as the holiday season comes and goes and the New Year lays ahead, I will take time into my own hands, create with it, and let it release me into a scrapbook full of riches.
The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it.- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe