Tag Archives: Experience

The Coming of Time

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I am feeling like I am running out of time, that time is passing, running very quickly, away.  I have been facing this situation for more than half my life now.  I have been watching time leave me, quickly, without apology or recourse since I successfully graduated high school.  As all my friends and even a boyfriend of mine, and I, went our different ways, to grow  into adults, so that we could build our careers, we accepted the nature of the situation.  It was a serious reason that made it seem justly logical despite the sadness of a world forcibly ending.

I am thinking of all the things I neglected, as if I made decisions only for something that would make me shiny and acceptable.  That if I could put all the grades I made and the high marks I received  to some sort of justified means and end.  This, I believed, could make me happy with myself.  That if I was acceptable to society, being an owner of a real estate and a vehicle, and even having relationships with people who would be inside the house I would live in and own, then, I would be happy.  So, now, what is the situation?  What is the verdict?  Still, all the things I have neglected are things that are still being neglected now.  However, I do miss those things, like I miss those high school friends, and that high school boyfriend, because I left them behind.  I wonder, sometimes, in that big “IF” question way: “What if we had been able to keep in touch, would I now be married to a doctor, instead of an engineer?”  Would I be happier that way?  Or, would the very psychiatric-bent of my husband drive me crazy?  His ability to needle and manipulate my emotions, becoming the bane of my existence?  Or, would this be one of the smarter things that I would value in my husband?

The actual situation is that I have married an engineer, who, I do not understand.  At any time we have our argument, we each take out our secret weapons.  He, his very mind-boggling understanding of the world as the size of a dice cube, and me, my very touchy-feely, sense that disproves his mathematically-cubist world.  At these times, I do not miss the neglect.  I am engaged and nothing else really is wrong.  Nothing else matters.

So, why is it that when I look at the clock, I miss more than just time slipping by?  Why is it that my mind wanders, and I start to wish about having other things, things that for some reason, I imagine are better?  Better than what I have, which I have earned justifiably and with justifiably hard work?

I feel that if I don’t have the time to participate in things I once cared about, then, I will be a part of the world that neglects and leaves those things that matter.  That there will a be worse world in the future than in the present.  And, I fear, then, that the world will become worse, because I participate in those things that are worse.  This is world that will grow, whenever people support those things that help it become real.  These things, like almost all things, take time, take investment, and take space….  The willingness to go there, with ingenuity and belief, and love.

So, I am running out of time, and I am calculating the time as it flits away.  I fear for my children’s world.  I fear that we will neglect things too much, beyond repair, beyond recompense.  That it will take double the time and effort to just restore goodness when the bad and evil has taken it over, filling all knowledge and sense.

The logical thing to do, is to find time to start.  And knowing this, it is like I am my own creator of stress.  How many books will I have time to read on top of the life I have now?  How much will I gain from reading books, from watching movies, and from taking care of things I neglect, even though I will not worry about all of it any more?  I am running out of time.  There will always be things I will never experience.  I wonder and I worry if this will make me less than an acceptable human being.  That I will be a loser and an unpopular person for all of my life.  But, from reality, every single person has a life that is limited, beyond their control.  Some people, grow up quickly, and choose the limits, the neglect, but most people, live with the limits imposed on them.  And, even I, so gallantly writing this essay, feel that I am missing things that would make me better. I wish often, for things that money cannot even buy.  I look at the clock again, and again, it is fast, and I am left behind, with what happens outside of time–nothing.

So, I will try to remember my own advice.  When I think that nothing matters, I will remember that I have worked, earned, and lived, my life.  Everything that I have is because of me, and is honorable.  As my Grandmother says, “When you have all the time in the world, you cannot be worth it, until you are running out of it, and it leaves you for dead.”  Thank you, Grandma.

Mice and Elephants

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An old Indian Guru once told me, when words and their meanings were not important to me, to remember a particular statement he had made, even if I remembered nothing from all of his flowing words of the afternoon.  It is easy to remember, as I can still repeat verbatim in all accuracy, even now, twenty years later.

“Speak like mice and learn like elephants.”  The meaning is also obvious enough.  The advantage of mice is their ability to be quick and quite piercingly loud, while elephants have their bulk in muscle which keeps them from falling over.  Lucky for us, elephants tend not to be violent, otherwise, we’d all be mashed potatoes.

At the time this was said to me, I was only concentrating on school and trying to get high enough marks to be allowed into the next grade.  And, I can tell you, unfortunately, I did not get into the next grade.  But that actually is a different story than this one.  I saw the meaning to be meant for those who were failing (or not making the grade), since it was instructional.  I am always in habit, because I have always made the grade, in one way or the other.  So, I saw all the others sitting around me in the auditorium to be the intended recipients of the free advice on making the grade.

The Indian Guru, actually explained in great detail.  It is known that elephants eat a tonne of food and water every week.  They are social and travel and live in packs.  They rear their young in families, within the larger pack that they live and travel with.  They pass their wisdom down to their young through experience and living.  Elephants are never on the endangered species list, and are not in danger of being extinct.

Well, what of mice?  They are rodents.  Very dirty rodents who live in filth and dirt and eat scraps of food that have dropped from mouths and plates.  They carry disease that is easily passed from mouse to mouse to other rodents, and if they are in your house, they will pass life endangering diseases like the Hanta Virus on to the human beings in the house.  They have their offspring in litters of up to six at once.  Only the quickness of a cat can catch the speedy mice, as they are able to hunt them out of their holes.

So, why should we try to speak like mice?  What redeeming quality would we be displaying if and when we speak like mice?  They live and act like they are in wartime situations, fighting for scarce food and only doing, eating, and squeaking for self-perseverance.  They know how to stay alive.  By using the sparse food supply and their ability to find life like lawyers are able to find life in a death sentence, they stay alive… and for us, we win the argument.  We are able to defend those values, and those things, that are important to us.  We will have our pack of elephants to travel with, thanks to our ability to be there.

So, what did I think and do with this Indian Guru’s words of wisdom that I did not consider or care about more than twenty years ago?  I thought his wisdom was out of date, from too long ago.  None of the situations that he spoke about actually applied to me at any of the times that I thought of myself in.  And, thus, my evaluation of his talk:  Only those who were not making the grade to get into the next class needed it.

Now, I am a little more circumspect.  Words have more meaning than just the meaning listed in the dictionary.  I surprised myself just the other day.  I did a college students’ favorite get-drunk-pastime:  I listed all the similar words I knew existed for “Molestation.”  Then, I looked up the dictionary definition.  None of the words were synonyms and none of the words were actually accurate of my understanding of the situation of “Molestation.”  How different this world is from that world I was in when I had access to great talks given by experts and Gurus of all kinds!  I am in wonder how I was actually able to learn anything at all!

There was a time when I considered the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language my bible.  It was the only way through which I could understand the world, and any of the articles and books that I was reading.  Now, if I were to rely on this staid and steadfast bible, I would become very lost as to what people are talking about.  I remember wisdom and I remember blessings, and I remember stories.  None of these things relies on the dictionary.  they all rely on life.  So, as the weather gets warmer, and you are looking for something to do…  Go wild one day this summer… Sit by the dock and get drunk for the afternoon and see how many words you can think of that have the same meaning!

Sitting in Garden Court All By Myself

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Today, I had many things to do, but there was one big break in between it all.  I spent it sitting in the Mall nearby, slurping up a Frappacino… one of my favorite drinks, especially if there is Strawberry Creme in the ice.

While I was there, among so many people all there with other people, I penned, two quick poems.  I have a teacher right now who swears that a poem tells a story without the words telling the story.  By the time the whole poem is read, she claimed, that it is the saturation of myth, theme, and character that fills up the whole story from beginning, to middle, to end.  So, to possibly suffer from any discouraging criticism, I am entering the poems here.  The poems are just my thoughts on things that have happened this past week.  I will not divulge names, or relations, but, yes, the events or feelings described, actually happened.  Please be kind!  🙂

 

Time to Hope for Life

 

A whiskey sour ruins the bourbon

Spicy ground beef fills the wrap shell

Some cheese and onions crusted

On fresh bread that took too long

 

The morning is perfect for something

The weight in my stomach concurs

It is likely that I am too rushed

To let the plastic bag go or my wish to fly

 

Dear time, stealer of moments and fun

Wait for me when it is the end

The sound of the seconds rushes

And I fall, the trance intense.

 

Marble pleases and we wonder why

Smooth, cold, and heavy

It breaks in large cracks

Pieces beyond dust that fill the puzzle

Creating beauty that is imagined by God.

 

The wetness of a drop of water spreads

Like a film of oil, the dampness creates cold

No smell, no taste, the quietest whisper muffled

Until the dog comes in from the rain.

 

In the Moment of Heat

 

The noise of loud swearing

The hallmark of anger

Smashes the air

The fingers pointing

At the sky

At you

At the point being made

 

Unheard in the haze

Of tears

Of forgotten reasons

And some loose emotions

Of mine

Against your words

The cup of the hot water is thrown

And the door slammed shut.