So. Much. Nope.

Holy wow.  It's almost August?  How is it almost August?  I mean, I know how it's almost August, in theory, because time and dates and winged something and whatnot, but how the hell is it almost August???

Where have I been?  What have I been doing?  It was just June, just yesterday, really, just June, and now it's suddenly almost August?

My house is a mess.

How's that new?  It's not, really, I'm just thinking that it can't be almost August and my house is still the same mess it was in May.  At the very least, there should be a whole new mess, but this?  This is the same mess.  That candy cane was on the floor before I left for my father's memorial in June.  Why is it still there?  Why haven't I picked it up?

The glue on the dining table is the same glue, flecked with the same glitter, as it was in May.  Those sharp little Play-Dough shards are still scattered about the floor, months after they forgot what it is to be soft, yielding, pliable.

I've been here.  Haven't I been here?  I mean, I've been hither, thither, and yon, but also I have been here, in this house.  It's not like I've been held captive at some remote location, I have been here!  As much as I'm "here", anyway, because some days, a lot of days, I am not as here as I may seem to be because I can look really, really here but be far, far away behind my eyes.  But still, here, or "here", or whatever, how is it almost August and I'm still feeling the sweet, melancholy tug of June, the sense of "I'm not prepared for summer" still strong where "Hurrah, Autumn's coming" should be.

It is possible that I shattered a little in April, and the cracked, crazed pieces are still falling down, tinkling on the floor and crunching under foot and I'm not quite all the way caught up with myself, but I'm almost never quite all the way caught up with myself.  Hell, I'm usually so far behind me I can't see my ass in the distance, even with binoculars and wishful thinking!

I am filled with nope.  So.  Much.  Nope.  Acres, gallons, miles of nope.  It's everywhere, it gets all over everything, it's sticky and pernicious, like moon dust but less clean-up-able and way less precious and collectible and rare.  It's clogged up my thinking bits, so that music and writing and laundry and cleaning and people and everything are all lost and muddled up, and I'm lonely in a desperate kind of untouchable way, but that's so common, I'm used to it, like a cricket chirping quietly in the garage that sometimes I hear and sometimes I don't but it's always there, chirping, and it doesn't much matter any more.

That much nope.

I'd tell you I'll do better today, tomorrow, next week, but I don't know if that's true.  I kind of half-heartedly hope that I'll do better sometime sooner rather than later, but honestly, I'm in the middle of a massive nope storm, so I'm just going to keep ducking and covering and wondering how it got to be when it is when it was just when it was.

Between Sleep and Waking

Between sleep and waking there is a place of half aware, half dream, where the mind weaves the input of the senses with threads of fantasy.

In this place conscious thought and imagination are jumbled jigsaw puzzle pieces haphazardly stuck together to make patchwork pictures that defy explanation outside the nebulous, wobbling incohesion between sleep and waking.

It is easy to get lost there, between sleep and waking.  Days dazed, not quite here, not quite there, scattered everywhere.  What was I doing in this room?  Why did I walk over there?  Why am I holding this dish, this broom, this piece of clothing, this book?  What was I trying to get done just now?  Did I see that, hear that, was it inside my head or out?

Walk through a door and forget, and forgetfulness becomes the wet woolen batting that wraps a body up from head to toe and makes everything heavier, sort of musty, slow, unfocused.  Walk back through the door, trying to remember, only to find that memory is elusive, a wisp within the mist swirling throughout the place between sleep and waking.

Minutes, hours, ebb and flow.  Liquid, undefined, gelatinous, oozing time slips through slack fingers, circles the drain, and is gone before it was ever there, life passing in stilted stop-motion muzziness like some old black and white movie playing on an endless loop between sleep and waking.

Somehow life goes on in tenuous moments pasted together with cobwebs, onion skin thin and brittle and always on the edge of becoming dust in the corners of the place between sleep and waking where it will remain unnoticed, unremembered, unremarked until the errant breezes of thought and consciousness send it swirling away to become motes on a sunbeam.

Minutes and Days

It is morning, quiet, the house still, holding its breath, anticipating the coming day. Three cats are curled beside me, purring commas, delighted to fill the space between me and the man sleeping next to me (turned on his side, deeply asleep, unaware of the world outside the dreams swirling through his head).

The room is shaded, but not dark, a sort of halfway light that could be dawn, could be dusk, could be any of the in-between times of day when the eyes can't tell the time and a clock must do the trick.

I pet the cats, careful not to startle them into frantic, charged motion - I don't want them launching themselves from my leg, or his, digging claws in for purchase, leaving behind unwanted racing stripes.

I close my eyes for a few more minutes, drift between minds and places, float a bit before returning. How long was I gone? It felt like hours, but only minutes have passed.

There are minutes like that in every day - minutes stretched to their limits, full to bursting, suspending their normal tick and tock to hang in breathlessness, endless. Bad news, good news, no news, minutes that take forever to unpause and get moving into the next hour.


Then there are the days...days that boom across the hours, racing in their anxiety to be spent, done, to push through and pass the baton to the next span of the sun's journey. I wake, on these sprinting days, and suddenly I find myself readying for bed - despite all the long minutes between times, the day is done and I wonder where it has gone.

It is March, nearly April, and the balloon from Bird's birthday still hovers at the end of its ribbon tether, depleted but proud. I am caught, still in January when the shiny Mylar was plump, and new, and now, when it hangs like a soap bubble, not entirely sure what is keeping it up.

I'm hanging in time like that balloon, like the bubbles, caught between the dawn of creation and the end that, with a surety, is a sudden pop! before it all begins again.

Whirling in a mix of eternal minutes and rushing days, year passing years, gone before I've had a moment to grasp them, make them mine before releasing them again.

About Time.

Every year, as I am changing the million or so clocks in our house to accommodate...I have no idea, any more, why we bother...I think about time. Pardon me, about Time.

What an interesting construct, is Time. Entirely human in design and implementation, because no other creature that we've met so far has anything like it.

The wild things simply know "now" and "not now".

Wolves are a fine example of now-mindedness, creatures who have a sense of tomorrow but no worry or fear of it. They have now. If they are hungry now, they hunt and eat now. If tired, sleep. They know, as do all wild creatures, that hungry and weary will occur again and again, but they don't let it fuss them.

Humans do all the worrying, don't we? We often wish we could go back some measure of Time and change something we said, or did, or something someone else said or did. We speculate on what it would be like to go into the future. Go far enough and we'll end up viewing the end days of the Universe. And, concurrently, the beginning.

I like to think that I live a largely Timeless life. Unless I have an appointment or something that requires me to be on time, I don't pay attention to the minutes, the hours. I rise when I wake, and that's got more to do with when I go to sleep than anything else. I dine when hungry, not by the clock. Day and night are measured, for me, by light and dark, by sun and moon. I don't swim in the river of Time, I float along with the current and enjoy the journey. Well, for the most part. Life being what it is, sometimes I am forced to be aware of the Time. I know how long it takes to get to any of my usual destinations at any given time of day, so I know what time I have to leave the house. I keep a calendar handy when I make appointments, write them down the instant I've made them, make sure to check once or twice a week to see if I need to be mindful of the Time.

When I wake in the morning, just about the first thing I think is "Today is (whatever the day is) and I have xyz to do today. Then sometimes I go back to sleep for a bit, and sometimes I get up and get busy.

I don't need an alarm clock - I tell myself when I need to be up, and I am awake at that hour without fail.

For all that I ignore Time, I like clocks. I loved waking up on Sundays at my grandparent's house and listening to my grandfather wind the clocks. The brass ship's clock from his grandfather's boat in the front hall, a Rococo ceramic monstrosity of a mantle clock in the living room, and one simple wooden mantle clock in the sitting room. That ratcheting noise carried throughout the house. The clocks would toll the hour with bells and chimes, the ship's clock being the best sounding in my opinion. The simple wooden Seth Thomas clock was next in my favor - that's the clock I brought home with me after he died, the brass clock going by family tradition to my uncle. The Rococo horror could have gone to the devil for all I cared - it was possibly the ugliest clock I ever clapped eyes on and it belonged to my grandmother.

I still wind the Seth from time to time, just to hear it chime. It wants servicing if it's to run properly and actually keep the time, but I don't really need it for that.

The scope and range of inventions for measuring time are staggering. You can buy anything from a two-dollar wristwatch to one valued at thousands or even tens of thousands.
Hour glass?

Or grandfather clock?

Wall, shelf, or mantle clock? Case, anniversary, digital, or analog? Gold, silver, steel, plastic? Is it going under water? How deep? Up a mountain? How high? Do you want a calendar, calculator, pedometer with that? Take your pick! Perhaps a water-clock is just the thing.

I sometimes carry a silver and steel pocket watch that belonged to T's grandmother, because I enjoy the simplicity and elegance of the piece. Also, it has blue hands. It doesn't have the hunter case (that neat flip-open cover), but it's pretty sturdy and keeps good time when I remember to wind it. I prefer the analog to the digital, because there's just something comfortable about the ticking.
I know people who are entirely caught up in the idea of Time - they carry a watch, have a clock on their phone, designate every minute of every day. They don't like my drifting tomfoolery. As I typed that, I laughed, because I can be a little retentive about timeliness.

When I actually consent to be a part of the life of Time, when I must be somewhere at a designated hour, I am there. I do not like being late, nor do I tolerate well the lateness of others. Especially when I live far from my destination and they live near. Even after I had the Evils Genius, I wasn't late. I had to adjust my own plans to be on time for others, and I did. If I can be on time, then so can they!

Tardiness is rude. Considering that I am one of the rare folk in my group of friends and associates who is ever actually on time, I have had to learn to let go of my ire, and even be manipulative of others. Tell them our meeting time is half-an-hour earlier than it is and they'll show up just on time, certain they're late and not very convincingly apologetic about it. Also, I bring yarn and a crochet hook and try not to seethe when poor planning on another's part means I have to wait. It's not always easy though - I have knee-jerk negative response to blatant, habitual rudeness.

All in all, I would prefer to live a timeless life. It's much less stressful. The only real moment we experience, anyway, is now.