So long as we still have memories, each of us eventually becomes a time traveler. When I walk down a NYC street, I can see how it looked 20 years ago as clearly as I can see the way it is now. And when I speak to someone I’ve known a while, I can see all the ways they once looked, talked, and felt as easily as I can see who they are at this moment. I’ve always known our bodies are time travelers–that they store every feeling and experience we’ve had and translate them into ailments and strengths. Lately I think our minds are, too. Einstein said, “The only reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen at once” but he was only talking about chronos, or linear time. In kairos, or soul time, everything does happen at once, and none of those things change unless spiritual progression occurs.
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Februa, Again
February begins, and we feel the stillness of the Earth, our gardens, our streets, ourselves. We are awaiting germination and do that best by keeping still. Not unconscious but subconscious, latent, receptive. Quiet. I used to hate this month but now embrace it as the gentlest lesson in faith. There are no more festival of lights planned, no bracing rituals to keep the wolves at bay. Rather, it is time to take long, solitary walks and to cook slow, root-laden meals. To trust rather than test. To listen rather than list. To sleep and to dream but not to dance on anyone’s grave. Not for nothing does Imbolc, the Gaelic festival that literally means “In the belly,” fall on February 2. This is the time to honor fertile seeds still buried deep. We must believe that this bare ground, this stony silence, can grow everything we’ll need or else it never will. I think of Philip Larkin’s words and am once again grateful for his guidance through life’s necessary seclusions:
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
When Time and I Collide
With my Sunday supper bubbling in the oven, I guess it’s time to call it: I crashed into walls the entire weekend. Yesterday I wrote and read and forgot everything I remembered. On the way to dinner, I ran into two different friends and couldn’t recall their names or even how I knew them. Today I went to Meg to fetch a pair of pants I’d specially ordered and realized they simply weren’t for me. I ran for the ferry only to arrive as it was pulling away from the dock. I left my bag at the 1st Avenue L stop, and dashed back from Brooklyn just in time to catch two guys rifling through it across the platform. “Gentlemen!” I called across the divide. “Do you mind watching my bag until I can get back to your side?” They pointedly looked away when I arrived in front of them, red-faced and panting with my hand outstretched, but handed it over.
It didn’t matter, any of it. I got home in time to make the lasagna I’d planned. I eventually remembered who my friends were. And my bag still contained the purple scarf I made the winter I couldn’t stop knitting, the long fingerless gloves that make me feel like Jo March, the notes from today’s session with brilliant astrologer and general wise lady Virginia Bell. Continue Reading →