Time Will Tell

And I might listen

I was reading and listening to Arvo Pärt, the brilliant Tabula Rasa. I wish I could say he is my crazy Estonian friend but he is just mad (or minimalist) and Estonian. I didn't have a pen so many pages are dog-eared and I’ll go back later to figure out which words hit me. There was sparkling water next to the bathtub too, of course, spicy enough to shock when eyes defocus and mind drifts. Oh, yes, the thoughts of things left undone and other things that may lie ahead randomly crash into my consciousness, leaving me just semi-conscious, part here, part there, wherever that is, perhaps part of.

I feel these days and their events adding up up, maybe coming to a head, or breaking as a wave. Sometimes the day is too much and sometimes not enough, fallen short of what it might have been, what I could have made it. Other days are simply short because they get too heavy to continue so I obliterate what consciousness remains, and turn off the clock, well, the one that I could see.

Time works its magic in the background, accounting, aging, waiting, admonishing, welcoming ... all of it. All things measurable eventually make a relationship with time. It can soften, and embrittle. It can grow love, and ferment hatred. It is a magnifying glass and also the 10,000-foot view. We change with it and are changed by it. Softened. Hardened. Taught love and patience and empathy, and taught to sit idle or maybe hunt the wild thing inside that does not leave us alone in the night.

I am waking up in that night lately, which never used to happen. It used to be that I couldn't fall asleep until two or three or maybe sunrise but now I do sleep, only to awaken in the early dark, too soon to stand up, with hours of darkness remaining, and hours of thought. Circling. Me admonishing me so time doesn't have to do so.

I ask where I am and why, and what has woken me, what undone thing was so necessary that it would not allow me to sleep. Or was it a dream, a vision, something past or maybe ahead, the thing that intuition knows and tries to make conscious me understand. So I toss a bit and maybe turn, I put a foam plug in one ear to deaden the sounds, to focus senses inward, and still, nothing. No actionable insight, no feeling except the weight and uneasiness. Nothing certain, as if there ever was.

When I cannot write my own I return to others' words, seeking insight or inspiration, maybe a rhythm or a distant melody to draw my own words forth, teasing, coaxing, examining ...

I have always written with an objective. To provoke. To exhume. So when words spill like water instead of blood I doubt their value, they barely register, just waste being removed, like an empty image captured but saved because maybe I'll see its value in the future. It has happened once or twice, that images or ideas gained value and weight over time. Mostly though, if it doesn't almost break me now I know it won't make me feel any more later.

Eventually, time will tell. And I might listen.