Pressure - I was feeling a lot of pressure when I wrote this a year and a half ago. A new house with so much work needed, along with my pending decision to quit my career in order to live a new life in a new way. Quiet time - quieting the endless chatter was, and sometimes still is, hard.
I sat in the dark this morning for a half-hour or so - a goal I had to get myself back to some quiet time alone. No music or TV, no fire or thoughts of what remains screaming from the endless to-do list around this house we now call our home...
The first thing I noticed as my mind chatter began to quiet was the song of the Grandfather clock - a clock I just bought at an auction a week ago. Tick-tock, tick-tock it called out and I listened. It was different from the clock on the VCR that called out from under the TV, which is a constant visual reminder of the minutes remaining until I need to be in the car and on my way to the building of cubes to deal with the twelve’s and fives that need to be rearranged...no, the grandfather clock speaks a different language...tick-tock, tick-tock....
There is no plug that ties the grandfather clock into the grid - no external power that turns its gears - two weights hanging from chains powers the time piece...tick-tock, tick-tock. It is a pleasant sound - nothing to tell me what time it is, only a gentle reminder that my time to do what I came to do is here and now...tick-tock, tick-tock...until the half-hour arrives and the clock sings out two notes - kind of a ding-dong - like expensive doorbell chimes, which makes me smile each time I hear it. It doesn't matter what time it is, it just marks another half-hour in human time (humans, after all, are the only ones that really have a need for time...) has passed...or just begun...
...And a truck from Route 5 makes its way into my living room and my mind - reminding me that the outside world is constantly in motion - keeping busy, so very busy, in order to keep distance between the cultural matrix we find ourselves living within and the reality that a quiet mind exposes - the two cannot live together in harmony.
Tick-tock, tick-tock...and then the heat kicks on...a reminder of the consistency that we've constructed all around our lives...the furnace keeps our home a constant temperature, and our jobs keep us in the same lines each morning during rush-hour, and the holidays bring us together to celebrate in the same way with the same people at the same places - groundhog day - played out over and over with few variations, the same maps followed...tick-tock, tick-tock...
...And as I type these words, the little numbers in the lower left of the screen tell me that it's time to get into the shower...time to get my butt in gear in order to make it to work on time...again...as I did yesterday...tick-tock, tick-tock...and the question whispers from my quiet mind who doesn't understand why numbers affect me so, and says, "how long will you continue to do this?", tick-tock, tick-tock...
In re-reading this post from long ago, I noticed that I wrote of numbers (the time) in the "lower left of the screen". They are actually in the lower right. ...And then I realized why. At the time I was writing a year and a half ago, I was looking within, rather than the other way around - the mirror image; and so...all was reversed - or perhaps...reality.
