I long for that time, but perhaps that time is already here. I often do not know the day anymore, so consumed with living that the time, the hour, the date are becoming so much less relevant to the life I live today.
No longer ruled by the calendar of men, or women, or courts, or bosses, or children’s schedules. Released, well almost, from the clutches of a schedule. I mean I still have one. And I still find myself lost onto the timing of myself.
I fall in love with sentences and men, men that shall eventually only be sentences in my long winded life of words. Those uttered and not.
I love the idea of the tide being my calendar. The day beginning and ending with a view of a coastal water. A clear receding of the day, the hour, my life. I am shunning the life of calendaring. A position that I longed for, demanded, hell bent myself to decide. Now what once felt like freedom, no longer does. It feels like tentacles that tighten over my body and breath, that leave me feeling hollowed out and alone.
I ran away again the other day. From the life, the responsibilities of myself. To the coast, plopped my chair down on a reedy bluff, and watched the surf, surge and roil...wind whipping my hair into a frenzied fervor of follicle.
I smiled when I realized that I already only believe in the the tidal calendar, really. My other benevolence to the calendar of personage, just another folly, another scam upon which I play at life. But here next to the ocean’s edge, I care not what time it is or really even what day. I can live here forever, well at least until the sun sets and I become chilled to the marrow and will allow the sun’s absence to get me moving towards shelter.
I am lost again. Or perhaps this I have always been lost. To you anyway, and to myself at times. Pretending to be someone that fits in, that can do the person things, when really what I long for is quiet, solitude, a solace of comfort that I seem to only be able to give to myself.
Time being something of a scoundrel these days, me finding that I always seem to have too much or too little, finding myself adrift in a life that is replete with so much goodness that I fail to notice it with sufficient appreciation and zest. Clamoring always for more, more, more, when what I know I need is always less.
I have tried to find understanding and comfort, not by actually practicing those things myself, but by insisting, grasping, longing, pursuing, demanding. It doesn’t work, it never has, and yet I persist.
A giant rock sits in a white capped bay in the distance. Out of place, seemingly dropped there, and now unable to move its own weight. Unaware, it would also appear, that its foundation is on shifting sands and itinerant tides, that threaten its stability and placement over time. The rock cares not. Content to sit under the clouds, or the sun, or the wind, or rain. It is there, and that is all it knows.
But me, I see it and turn it over in my mind, because there it is weightless and moveable. I do this with other things as well, people, ideas, books, things that are decidedly much more like that rock than I care to admit or really even entertain.
The large expanse of rock, it believes only in the tidal calendar, the calendar of man useless to its survival.
And so as time moves forward, I see that as age advances, I too move towards a tidal order, and away from the color coded thing that mocks me in my kitchen. Really there is nothing of great importance that ever really lands there. Just the mundane tasks of living that I can’t seem to forget even though I try.
The longing for this life that is hinged upon the tides, is likely closer than I might believe. A not so distant hum that moves me forward and toward whatever comes next. I pray that it is something that cannot be written down, penned neatly into a time slot with a color coding that belies its true nature.
And I find, that eventually, belief has come, and landed in my life. And the peace is great and lasting. Finally, calendars almost useless to manage this life I live. Feels like a victory, really.
The title of this piece is taken from a Mary Oliver poem - "To Begin With, The Sweet Grass"
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