Time

Every year is getting shorter. Never seem to find the time. Plans that either come to or nought a half a page of scribbled lines. Hanging on in quiet desparation is the English way. The time is gone. The song is over. Thought I'd have something more to say. -Pink Floyd

Every watch that I have ever owned has always been a gift from the Docta.

After we had feasted on crusty bread, pate and slivers of gorgonzola, a picnic the Docta spread out on the floor of my dorm room, he gave me a small box. I hadn't expected a gift from him since this was our first Christmas together. Inside the box was a watch simliar to the one below, a sun and moon dial that changed faces from day to night.
The sun and moon will always rise for you... he told me.
He went on to say that he had agonized, as he always does, over whether to buy this particular one and whether I'd actually wear it.
I wore it everyday till the leather band cracked apart and the battery went dead.


A couple years later I lost the second watch he had given me during a snowstorm on a midnight walk to Packard drive. Although our destination was only a few short blocks away from the Docta's apartment, we spent hours skating down slick walkways, making snow angels, and throwing snowballs till we were red cheeked cherubs. That night we sat around in big fuzzy socks taking turns sipping ramen noodle soup straight out of the pot. We never found that watch.
During those years it seemed that everything in my life was held up against clock time - my college courses: Korean politics lecture 1.5 hours, Botany lab in the Botanical Gardens across town 2 hours 15 minutes, the lunch shift at the Law Quad 3-6 p.m. my summer job filing medical claims for discharged soldiers 8-4, My first year as a teacher, 90 minute block periods and the brutal start time 7:45 a.m., Pregnancy: 9 months, Labor and delivery: 11 hours, the G's nap times from three naps to two naps to one.

Last night the Docta returned from a weekend with his parents in Santa Cruz. He could hardly wait to give me the package he had bought on his travels.




I bought it because it reminded me of the first watch I gave you the one with the sun and the moon.

I put it on my wrist staring at the two windows and the outline of a crescent moon.

Where is that first watch? Suddenly it was important to me that I find it. I pulled out every jewerly box, looked inside every cosmetic bag.
In my search, I found the other ones he had given me...

The ones that marked time in other phases of my life, our life.

16 years of clock time.

I guess it makes sense that this first watch is no longer to be found because Time means something entirely different for me now. The hours, the minutes the seconds no longer matter as they did back then when I was just enduring or living for the next break, the elusive good time.

Does time really heal all wounds? Does time really give us perspective and if so how do we know we've attained it? If we are waiting to answer a question that has no definitive answer how do we know it has been answered? I know this much you cannot determine in hours how long it will take you to heal or the exact hour you will be ready to forgive someone. I'd like to put those dates on my calendar but I know it would be fruitless.

I've been thinking a lot about time, about moving towards eliminating time altogether. "the psychological time which is the egoic mind's endless preocupation with past and future and its unwillingness to be one with life by living in alignment with the inevitable isness of the present moment."

This watch the Docta has given me with its abstract windows and numberless faces is the perfect reminder for me of the duality that time holds for me, that all we've got is time and yet time is nothing more than a "surface layer of reality."

Folklife

The G made his stage debut at Folklife Music Festival this weekend. Picture Woodstock meets Carnival meets local county fair where deodorant is a bonus and dancing is not optional.
On my shoulders the G was mesmerized by the sweaty, open, rhythms.
Bongos. Live saxophone. Electric Cello. The pan flute.
Everybody's playing somethin' and you want to dance to it all.
You will soon be on the stage, my man. I tell him.
When we arrive to the Mural Ampitheater, the G was not at all impressed with the size of the stage, with the hundreds of spectators,with the fact that he would have two costume changes, or with the fact that at 3.5 he was now a Latino pop star...
It was quite the production especially during the danza Azteca, the poor guy was tripping over his loin cloth and his tighty whities kept promising to give everyone a show so I had to rescue the poor lad who was fit for tears. For the most part, however, this guero danced like an Aztec King.

My favortite part of the whole performance was that the G did in fact know all the words to the songs. I wasn't quite sure what he would do up there because every time I asked him to practice los canciones en casa he would always feed me the line..."not now mama just wait"... sure enough with the pressure of a thousand wide eyed spectators this kid piped up and delivered every word. He was especially in tune with the song "De colores" one of my childhood favorites. When the mic came his way he gave it is his best pio pio, the chirping of a little chick hen.....
I didn't expect him to stay for the three dance numbers.

I didn't expect him to wait in the wings for his turn.
And I definitely didn't expect him to turn to me at the end of it all and shout "Lo hizo mama" " I did it" Una sonrisa the size of the river Nile...

The journeywork of the stars

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars…and the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, and the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn machinery..And I could come every afternoon of my life [to watch the sun push out the clouds]” –Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I needed this trip to the farm. From the very instant we rattled down Oma and Opa’s dirt driveway I could tell I was going to lose myself in thigh high wild grass and the hum of distant tractors turning up the field.

Upon arrival the G and his buddy Xave immediately disappeared.
“Hello” they called from between the lemon curtains of the cozy little Bavarian playhouse. Ignoring the cobwebs and dust of winter that left this little place lonely and desolate, the two boys went straight to work pouring tea and stirring up imaginary concoctions.
I needed this therapy ,a hammock and a good friend, arms behind our heads staring into the vast blue sky as the music of our children buzzed between us.
Here I could forget my own little earthquake in exchange for this… the present moment.

The philosopher Nietzche, in a rare moment of deep stillness wrote, “For happiness, how little suffices for happiness!...the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a wink, an eye glance-little maketh up the best happiness. Be Still.”

In the henhouse the G is feeding a cluster of banty chickens in patterns that only a designer could dream up, wild stripes and ovals in shapes like smoke rings. Inspired I think I might go home and make myself a skirt ala banty chicken.

We walk the long walk to the neighbor’s farm, following a dried up river bed, waving to the tractor man as he plows the field, making swords out of sticks, staring at our reflections in rain filled puddles.
And then to the barn, that smell of sweet hay and hard work and goat breath. Xave and the G are squealing as they feed the crew of goats that butts and pushes themselves through the fence slats. Again. Again. Lets feed them again the G demands. Xave shows him where to find the barrel that brims with goat feed. No G no more, the goats are full buddy.
Ahhh the Three year old melt down that luckily in this outdoor air is very short lived as soon as we slip through the fence and break free…

After dinner and a lively talk with Oma and Opa about yoga and the saving grace of meditation, thoughts and attachment, ego and awareness, we stumble to the car high on hay needles and the peace that comes from life at this slow pace.

Opa has given me a book on meditation a gift to take home. “I buy a lot of copies of this book just so I can give them out. Read it and pass it on.”

I cradle it in my arms on the drive home along with the idea that the beauty and simple kindness of this day is not to be pinned down. “It is the cloudless sky. It has no form. It is space; it is stillness, the sweetness of being and infinitely more than these words.”