We were lucky this year: May was gentle and cool. Plenty of rain, soft breezes at night. That's over now. Triple-digit days are here, with a promise of 107 degrees in a few days. Yet, June has its pretty moments here in North Texas. My mimosa bloomed for the first time. The honeysuckle remains strong. And though I would like to extend May, I know that June takes me one step closer to Autumn, my favorite time of the year.We can segment time on the clock all we want. We can sell 30 seconds of it to an advertiser for millions of dollars. We can waste it, use it well, or attempt to ignore its inexorable movement forward. Still, even in this digital age, time remains outside our control.
I knew a dance teacher who told his students: "There are two kinds of time: time and counter-time." As I watched the students learn their steps, I understood that even counter-time is still connected to time, still keeps the dancer in constant relationship to time. Another teacher I knew, one from India, used to end all his lessons with: "Remember: Time."I'm remembering now. I'm realizing, not for the first time, that the only true movement is inside Time, that it is the medium we do not and cannot control. It moves along, whether we come with it or not. I realize my desire to extend this year's pleasant month of May is much more delusion than desire.
Time to watch this part of the earth bake, to see the light grow in intensity, and to welcome the relief that comes with evening and dusk. It's not May now--and won't be--until Time brings me May again, without my influence, action, or longing. Time is free of all those things, refuses all my luggage, this train that keeps moving, moving to the vanishing point I cannot see--somewhere far, far down the line.
Text and images, copyright Ysabel de la Rosa, 2010, All rights reserved.
Comments