God Save the King

 

I wonder how strange it must feel for the former Prince of Wales to sign himself “Charles R”.

Though it’s only been a few days since the Queen’s passing, the adjustment to having a King has been easier than I’d originally imagined, perhaps because yesterday was about the proclamation and accession of the new monarch rather than about Her late Majesty. The formal proceedings at St James’ Palace were fascinating to watch. I never thought I’d say this, but bless Youtube as a repository for such things. At the end of a busy day prepping for my return to work, Ter and I were able to catch up on this piece of living history hours after it had happened. Time zone issues, you know.

Maybe it’s as much because she and I are career public servants as we are Royalists that we observed with keen interest the reading, signing, and witnessing of the accession proclamation by the King and Privy Council members. Draft Orders-in-Council were approved regarding use of the existing royal seals pending creation and authorization of new ones, one of a million changes to be made when a king succeeds a queen. Even here in Canada, in BC, there are protocols regarding the Queen’s portrait (drape it in black), the state of legislation passed under the previous reign (they remain in effect), and the shift of lawyers named from Queen’s Council to King’s Council (it’s automatic and immediate).

Again, His Majesty gave a fine speech, this time to the assembly. There is no doubt he gets both the gravity of his new responsibilities and the weighty challenge of following his mother’s stellar example. I still think he’ll do well enough in his own right, in his own way.

I was particularly touched – and amused – when the motorcade departing Buckingham Palace at the end of the day yesterday suddenly stopped halfway along the Mall. The Rolls carrying the King veered off at an angle and came to a full halt. The back door opened and His newly proclaimed Majesty got out for a spontaneous walkabout with spectators along the road. The scramble of media cameras to seek and focus on him with the crowd was hilarious, as the car had stopped between established view points and no one was prepared for it. Yet it confirmed for me the suspicion that his private grief may be helped by sharing in the public’s, for the Queen was a beloved figure in many people’s lives as well as within her own family.

There’s the surreal thing again. In absorbing the protocols around naming a new sovereign, I am reminded that the sole reason for them is that Queen Elizabeth has died. The reminder came this morning, when I awoke to the news that her coffin had arrived at Holyrood House in Edinburgh, there to await tomorrow’s service at St Giles ahead of transport to London and a lying in state at Westminster until the funeral on the 19th. Charles is in a uniquely painful position, taking on his mother’s job while simultaneously mourning her loss. Surely no other member of his family can relate so acutely to the awful contradiction of ascending monarch with mourning son. On all counts, I truly wish His Majesty well.

God save the King.

All in Good Time

 

This happens to me a lot.

The alarm wakes me up at crap o’clock. I lie half-asleep, thinking dark thoughts until muscle memory animates my body and I find myself sitting upright in bed. From there I shuffle into the bathroom and bumble through my morning ablutions, then stare at my closet until some sort of business casual ensemble jumps out at me. It’s a struggle getting into my pants one leg at a time, but I make it. Bling is then coordinated—earrings and pendant, maybe a nifty scarf to complement the fake gems in my studs. Pulled together and starting to wake up, I go to the bedroom door, open it—

—and the alarm wakes me up. It’s crap o’clock and I’m still lying in bed. I’ve dreamed the whole thing, and the first word to mind is a naughty one.

Sound familiar?

Years ago during coffee at the Wall, Boy Sister announced that he’d had a idea but couldn’t remember it. Then he wondered where ideas go when you forget them. My wee sister suggested that, in a parallel Universe, a light bulb had just gone on above his alternate self’s head so it wasn’t really gone, it had just skipped dimensions. Pretty heavy talk for my wee sister, by the way, but maybe she was on to something. Quantum mechanics, you know.

A thought is made up of energy. When a thought is acted upon, the energy of the thought becomes matter and therefore subject to the rules of time and space in this dimension. In my imagination, I’m already up and dressed. In reality, I have to haul myself out of bed and go through the motions, which takes time and (monumental) effort. Still, it’s the price of admission to this estate. Nothing happens instantly in the third dimension. Thoughts do, of course. Thoughts are easy. They pop into being without, well, a second thought. Wishes, dreams, intentions—they’re all energy. Each may be made manifest given physical time and space.

Or not. What we envision isn’t always what’s best for us, and the Universe only coughs up what we need to gain experience. It doesn’t always look like what we intended, though in retrospect it can often be seen to fit the original idea. It may take years before you realize that something happening now is actually something you thought of way back when. And then there are times when something you think becomes real within days, maybe hours, of you thinking it.

The point of all this, you ask? Patience, Grasshopper. All in good time ...

Save Me From Daylight Savings

I am a night owl. I can’t be one right now, but once I am retired and can claim my life 24/7, I’ll be up all night, or most of it, and the clock will cease to matter.

I know, I know. It shouldn’t matter now, but it does—never more than on those notorious weekends known for the infamous “time change”. Like this one. I started winding up a week ago, grumbling and muttering at folks cheerily espousing the extra hour of daylight as if it’s a gift. There is no “extra hour” of daylight, people. There’s just a shift in the distribution.

Being a night owl, I am by default not a morning person. A sun that was up before me last week will rise tomorrow after I get to work ... and that vexes me. Terribly.

I know, I know. If I relax and wait a few weeks, the sun will once more be up before I am. In fact, the birds will be awake before the three-year-old who lives downstairs, and by either means, I will still be dragged from dreamland against my preference to sleep until I can’t sleep anymore. Someone who gets into her jammies as soon as she gets home from work doesn’t need the sun to set after nine o’clock. I need it to set before nine o’clock, when I go to bed!

Some night owl. I can’t stay awake past the three-year-old who lives downstairs. That’s my love/hate relationship with time. I get up at crap o’clock because my job demands it—the best job (if not the best money) I ever had was working the graveyard at the local radio station. I’d get home at 6:30 a.m., go straight to bed, get up at 1:00 p.m. and have a life until I left for work at 11:00 p.m. On days off, I kept the routine and stayed up to write all night. I was never more prolific than I was in those days. If only the salary had been as good as my current day job’s. I guess we all make sacrifices to get ahead.

But the spectre of daylight savings continues to goad me. I’m not wild about the return to standard time, either, except it gives me back the hour I’ve missed since early March. Every spring, I ask the question: Why? Why why why why do we continue with this stupid ritual?

It seems I am not alone. There is finally talk of abandoning the time change. The west coast States are considering it, and if they go ahead, BC will follow because of trade agreements and partnerships that demand we all work within the same time zone. California has already voted overwhelmingly in favour of staying on DST starting in 2022. Whatever, guys, just bring it.

Wait a minute. Staying on DST? That means turning the clocks forward in March and not turning them back in November! WTF?

Remember, Ru, says my inside voice, there is no “extra hour” of daylight. There’s just a shift in the distribution. Eventually, the days shorten on their own and it will be dark well in time for bed. Staying on DST means you’ll be walking home from the bus stop at twilight instead of pitch black in December.

Yeah, but it also means the sun will be coming up at nine in the morning! I’m all for abandoning daylight savings time, but let’s switch back to standard first. I mean—wait a minute. 2022? Oh. Okay. Whatever works.

I’ll be retired and a night owl by then.

The Year of Being Human

Twelve months ago, Ter and I stood in our kitchen and proclaimed 2018 “the Year of Transition and Change”. She was on the cusp of committing to retire from the public service, my job had settled down after a major shift in program staff, my wee sis and I were planning to visit our brother on Prince Edward Island. There was some concern over a nodule in Mum’s forearm, but the experts were confident—as was she—that it would amount to naught. In all, the new year seemed full of promise and adventure, and we were ready to tackle all the good things we envisioned.

Perhaps we should have been more specific. Perhaps we should have proclaimed 2018 as a year of positive transition and change.

Ter’s intention to cruise into retirement went south when she was called to be shop steward in an ugly harassment case. I lost my office and was moved into a shared space when branch staff expanded beyond the eighth floor’s capacity. Though Mum’s radiation treatment appeared to be a success in February, after a couple of months of normal, she fell ill and died four weeks after Ter’s last day at work. Wee sis and I cancelled our trip to PEI—she had injured her back while helping Dad care for Mum, and quite frankly, the shock was so overwhelming that we reeled through the summer and well into the fall. That’s when our landlord let us know she was thinking to sell the suite. Ter tweaked a muscle in her neck at Thanksgiving and was laid up into November. The Tiguan went into the shop for an expensive overnight service—twice. The postal dispute threatened Christmas delivery of cards and parcels ... and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something in the continuous monsoon of WTF? we endured throughout 2018, but that’s the gist of our Year of Transition and Change.

Keeping the faith was pretty darned challenging during the past twelve months. It’s easy to believe in a loving friendly and generous Universe when all is going smoothly. The tricky part is seeing the light in darkness. The majority of 2018 was, for me, a battle against a pervading sense of loss. Every night, I struggled to maintain my belief in being loved by a higher power, to trust that things happen for a reason, when they are meant to happen, and to know the rest of my life will not be spent gaping into a black hole. The gauge on my power of positivity has hovered perilously close to empty at times. I have cried more in the past months than I have in past years. I have raged at the heavens and thrown up my hands. I have stormed and begged and dug deep to get through the past turbulent, tumultuous, unexpectedly tragic fifty-two weeks.

And yet I have seen miracles. Small ones, to be sure, but miracles nonetheless. I will always remember the preternatural brilliance of the day after my mother died; how sharply defined and brilliantly hued the world appeared through the Ocean Room window. I will cherish forever the kindness and support I was shown by my friends and co-workers, people who rarely see me vulnerable yet rose to the occasion when I could not help myself. Christmas presents appeared from nowhere at the last minute, as did emails from loved ones after long silences. And others, too numerous to name. Feeling my mother’s presence in the room. Ter’s parking karma. Being able to pay cash for Tiggy’s repairs. Having a beautiful place to call home. Laughing with my office roomie, then going for tea with her because we like each other enough to be more than workmates. Hugging my little sister. The list goes on.

Though I almost lost it more than once, I managed to keep my grip on the thread that binds me to divinity. I still believe in something greater than myself, that all-encompassing presence that some call God. In truth, I’m no longer sure what to call it. I just know it’s there, that I am part of it and it is part of me—and of everyone else who is, who was, and who will be. For me, 2018 was all about the human experience and it truly sucked ... but I survived. I’m not through it yet, of course. The calendar doesn’t control time, it merely marks it. By all counts, I am only halfway through the process of reconciling myself to the tectonic changes that occurred in the past twelve months, so the drama ain’t over yet. I am relieved to say, however, that the light is more evident now than it was even three months ago.

It occurred to me on Christmas Eve, the most magical night of the year, that miracles are like stars strewn across a midnight sky:

The longer you spend staring up at them, the more begin to appear, and soon the entire night is bright with light.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Happy New Year.

With love,

Parallel Lives

I know what you’re thinking. How could she have lived in Vietnam at the time of the war, when the war began after she was born in 1961?

Good question. If time runs in a straight line, it’s natural to assume that multiple lives occur in a similar format, i.e., one after the other. But what if they don’t? Time is cyclical, not linear, therefore it’s entirely plausible for multiple lives to follow the same principle. I mentioned this in an earlier post: if you picture Time as a big wheel, then you can stand in the twenty-first century on one side and look straight across the circle at a life in the tenth century. Or the thirtieth century, since who knows the wheel’s circumference?

You might say, that doesn’t explain overlapping lives. And you could be right. My “previous life in Vietnam” scenario may well have been a simple imagining inspired by a piece of music. It could also be a hint of a life in an alternate Vietnam, situated in another world in another dimension that mirrors this one. I’m just playing with possibilities here; I am not a physicist. I don’t even play one on TV! I do, however, believe there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

Like the one about parallel dimensions. If we live in the third dimension, what do the first two look like, and how many more are there? (Personally, I think the first two must be flat and boring, as indicated by the terms “one-dimensional thinking” and “two-dimensional character”.) Some theories suggest a whole whack of dimensions, co-existing at the same time on various planes, occurring in no particular order and housing who knows what sort of sapient energies.

Then there’s the “big Ru, little Ru” theory; the one that suggests the Ru in this life is a single facet of a multi-faceted Ru situated elsewhere, and that other facets of the greater Ru presently exist in a handful of other dimensions, living different lives in different conditions, all at the same time.

Blows your mind a little bit, eh? It sure blew mine. It took a while to get my head around it, and I’m still unsure exactly how I feel about being one of a bunch of Rus all connected to a mother Ru. It seems Type A-ish for a single entity to be so eager for experience that it divides itself into splinters and sends them out to grab all the gusto at once. First, if Time is infinite, then what’s the rush? Second, despite its glossy brochure, the multi-function device at the office can’t perform more than one task at a time (and neither can the human brain, by the way), so I question the ability of a greater Ru to live multiple lives at once through a squad of smaller Rus ... except it could explain how I lived in both Vietnam and Canada in the same span of years!

Circles Within Circles

Time doesn’t move in a straight line. Some folks argue that time doesn’t even exist. Others claim that the past, present and future exist all at once. It took me a while to grasp this last concept, but it kind of makes sense if you imagine time moving in a circle. If it does and I’m on the circle’s perimeter, then across its diameter, I might be staring into 10^th century history. At the same time, someone in the 10^th century is staring across at me—into the future.

A vehicle loosely described as an automobile was recently built from a blueprint of Leonardo da Vinci’s, and the contraption worked. You have to appreciate the theory of reincarnation to get this one, but really, how in the world did a man born in the 1500s know enough about engineering to develop the plan for a vehicle that worked when a gang of 21^st century geeks put it together? Was da Vinci ahead of his time? Or had he already been there?

Wild notion, eh? But so very cool when you consider others like him – Tesla and Mozart and Einstein, for instance, men so far advanced in their thinking that they must have lived in a time when their genius may actually have been part of the mainstream.

The one thing I know for sure is that I know nothing for sure. I’m just playing around with this stuff, less to make sense of my own existence than to amuse myself with the magic of universal possibility. If past lives are possible, why not future lives as well? Bend that timeline into an arc and suddenly ancient Egypt is in front of you. If a stint in Thebes is your next stop, who knows what miracles of the present may show up in ancient hieroglyphs four thousand years from now?

I know, I know. Clearly, I have too much time and not enough to do except invent these notions then put ’em out there for public consumption. But really, it is fun to ponder the nature of genius and wonder at its origins. I’m not afraid of being a dust mote in space, subject to the currents and eddies of time and dark matter. I seldom feel small or insignificant when contemplating the magnitude and miracle of creation. I only feel small and insignificant when confronted with the limited vision of ego, that infernal bit of biology hardwired to preserve itself even at the cost of its own existence.

Ter often tells me that I’m scary smart. Might be I’m just scary.

What If?

I have a cold. A monster cold, in fact, and it’s making me really crabby ... when I’m not lying on the couch feeling sorry for myself, that is. I have no energy, no interest, and no will to live. I can’t meditate through the brain fog. Thinking only worsens my congestion headache. All I want are green grapes and a full night’s sleep.

When I’m sick, I hate everything about this mortality gig. My Zen patience and good humour are as if they never existed (proof that it’s easier to keep the faith in good times than in challenging ones). And time? Time slows to an interminable crawl punctuated by the death rattle as I struggle to inhale through a perpetually stuffy nose.

Screw the self-healing and herbal remedies. Give me Benylin!

During one of my darker funks this week, I gave my mind its head. Generally, I try to contain it, but this time, I let it go, partly to see where it would go on its own, and partly because I didn’t care to stop it. I felt like crap. Fighting the good mental fight would take too much effort, so for a few indifferent moments, I dropped my deflectors and in poured the darkness.

What if it’s all a grand cosmic joke? What if we are, as Boy Sister likes to say, a failed lab experiment? What if there is no divine connection? What if the universe isn’t friendly and no one is listening? What if there is no plan, no path, and no learning? What if there are no past or parallel lives? What if there’s no future, no light at the end of the tunnel?

In short, what if there’s no point?

Well, shoot. Having hit bottom, I lay there for a minute and contemplated the void. What if, indeed? Is “nothing” something to fear? Does “nothing” validate the bad behaviour and brutal violence we inflict on each other every day? Conversely, does “nothing” devalue the beauty of a horse in full flight or the joy in a child’s laughter?

Okay, I thought, there may be no more to life than what I have now ... so why not be happy? Even if it makes no difference to the outcome, it’ll certainly make a difference to the moments I have. There is nothing to lose by choosing joy.

And assuming I survive this frigging cold, I plan to choose it forthwith!

Teacher, Teacher

My fear of missing the bus can be traced back to an episode in first grade. The class was to copy a page of text from our reader before school got out, and my Virgo perfection complex had me taking my time to get it right.

My sibs and I were bussed from home in those days, to the English speaking school across the Richelieu River and, at six years old, I assumed if I missed the bus home, I’d have to stay at the school overnight and it wasn’t even in the same town. Scary stuff, right? But when the bell rang and I wasn’t finished the assignment, the teacher made me stay behind until it was done.

The bus was waiting and if I wasn’t on it ... all sorts of nightmarish possibilities scampered across my mind, horribly distracting as I struggled to meet my deadline while in a burgeoning panic.

So I hurried. I did the best I could under duress, but it wasn’t good enough because the old bat looked at my work, picked up her red pen, and crossed out the whole page of my exercise book.

I made the bus home, which was my priority objective, but I fought tears the whole time. I think, but don’t recall, that I ripped out the page so my parents wouldn’t see the humiliation—I was hugely upset because I’d done my best in a race against the clock and the teacher had totally negated my effort. Whether or not it was, and forty-nine years later I’m still undecided, it felt unfair.

That particular teacher had a bit of a reputation among the student body (my older sister once did a hilarious impression of her yelling at kids on the playground), but she certainly left an impression on me.

Fast forward to seventh grade, my final year in elementary school after we’d relocated to Victoria. I had gone down the corridor where grades one, two and three were taught, probably to deliver something to one of the teachers. It wasn’t to the old dragon I encountered; that much I remember. I also remember her stopping me in the hall and demanding to know why I wasn’t in my own class. Mostly, I remember wondering why they assigned the most frightening old biddies to the first grade kids!

I seriously doubt this is the case now. From the antics of my co-workers who have school age children, I’m more sorry for the teachers than I ever was for my classmates because I’m pretty sure the sabre-toothed modern day mother would have had her fangs drawn by my first grade teacher.

Time on Your Side

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” - Lao Tzu

Where did we go wrong?

It’s not where you might think.

Okay, maybe it is. I agree that the speed of life has hit warp ten, and in the immortal words of Montgomery Scott, “we’re going nowhere mighty fast.”

Why is that? Why do we continually lament a loss of time in which to get things done? There is so much on everyone’s plate you’d think we’d accomplish something, but we end up spinning in circles, abusing regulated substances and each other, and getting no further ahead than our next paycheque.

So much for the pursuit of happiness.

Maybe we’re trying to do too much in too little time.

Or maybe it’s how we look at time itself. We view it as a limited commodity when we probably shouldn’t view at it as anything. We certainly shouldn’t regard it as linear. It’s not linear. It’s cyclical. Ask anyone with an inbox: you can’t empty the darned thing before it’s refilled as if by (black) magic. Time is the same. You can’t run out of it; it’s always there.

Better still, it’s there for you. In abundance. Honest. But if you believe you don’t have enough of it, or that you’ll run out of it, guess what? You don’t and you will.

I know, I know. How does this explain the difference between a dragging workday and a Mach speed weekend? Believe it or not, the same number of hours exists in a Tuesday as in a Saturday. I’m beginning to suspect that managing time effectively has more to do with how aware I am in the present moment. Not an hour or a day or a week from now, but right now.

Tuesday drags because I’m thinking about the weekend past or the weekend future rather than about what I’m doing at the moment. Once I focus on a project, time resumes its normal course. Not only does the day end sooner, I finish a task I initially feared wouldn’t get done due to—duh—lack of time!

By the same token, Saturday seems a lot shorter when I spend it thinking about work on Monday. I’m amazed at what I can accomplish on a weekend when I focus on the weekend itself rather than the dwindling time within it.

So the next time you’re worried about the time you don’t have, flip it to your advantage. Pay attention to the moment and repeat after me:

“I have all the time I need.”

And you will!

With love,

Accentuate the Positive

Recently, I’ve been practicing “real time”; that is, paying less attention to the clock and more to making better use of the present moment. I’m also aware that what you say isn’t half as important as how you say it. The universe responds to positive or negative in equal measure—worry that something good may not happen and odds are it won’t. By the same token, worry that something bad will occur and it probably will.

I think it was Mira Kelley who prompted me to test the universe with the way I word my intention. Rather than unconsciously intending to be late by consciously worrying about being late, my newest metaphysical guru recommends changing up the mantra to something like, “My timing is always perfect.” And don’t say it with sarcasm, wise guy. Say it with conviction, then see what happens.

You know what? It works. Truly. I’ve lost count of the occasions when I’ve been embroiled in some end-of-the-day work task that’s run long. I glance at the clock, blanch, then shut everything down, grab my gear, and head for the elevator in a flutter of fear that I’m going to miss my ride. En route to the lobby, I catch myself, suck in a breath, and recite, “My timing is always perfect.” I kid you not, on these occasions the limo is either pulling up as I come through the breezeway or it’s already waiting for me at the curb.

How is this so? Good question. All I can surmise is that it’s about physics. Like attracts like, ergo using negative words or thinking in a negative manner will attract negative energy and you become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Flip the switch to positive and the same thing happens. Gain enough momentum and suddenly you’re hitting all the green lights and getting all your necessities on sale. I’ve even managed to make ten bucks last through the week simply by saying I have enough cash to make it to payday—which, if you know anything about my social calendar and tea budget, you would appreciate as a miracle of biblical proportion.

It’s fun to test these theories. It certainly can’t hurt; that’s why I enjoy playing Philosophy Quest with Ter. She reads all the books, delivers the highlights, and I take ’em to the lab. My perfect timing is almost a fully ingrained habit; I have the odd relapse, but by and large I accept that I’ll make my appointment on time no matter if I am delayed or not.

Try it. You have nothing to lose … unless you want to.

Spring Forward 2.0

The universe has a strange way of changing people’s minds. For most of my life, I have hated, loathed and despised turning the clocks forward each spring. I have deeply resented losing that one precious hour of sleep, taking little comfort in the knowledge that it will be reclaimed come the fall. It jars my biological rhythm, plays havoc with my daily routine, and takes me a full week to regain any sort of equilibrium. For decades, poor Ter has endured my crabbing about it, for I often begin said crabbing well in advance of the appointed date.

Not so this year. This year, something bizarre has happened. I’m looking forward to the time change!

How has this unforeseen miracle occurred? What spectral manifestation has redirected my outlook? Well, quite simply, it’s all about the sunrise.

Since moving to the seaside in 2012, I’ve developed a passion for watching the sun come up over the water. Sometimes I sit on the couch and watch through the window; when the weather warms up, I’ll often get dressed and walk across to park on the beach while the light shifts and spreads over the ocean. It’s never the same show twice. Such occasions are restricted to weekends and days off, however; I’m usually dashing to work when the first rays of gold lance the clouds, so I savour those clear weekend mornings when all is quiet both in and out of the house. Trouble is, the sun and I are presently getting up at the same time. As I tend to sleep later on weekends (who doesn’t?), the sun is already up by the time I wake on a day off.

Drat, thinks I; must I choose between a lie in and the sunrise, and why is it even a choice? I don’t recall it being an issue in recent years … and then I remember: the time change. It hasn’t happened yet, and truth be told, without a glimmer of gloating, Victoria jumped from December to March with the merest nod to our customarily grey and soggy winter. It’s been springtime out west for weeks. No wonder I’m confused by the sunlight streaming down the hall of a Monday morning.

This weekend, my schedule realigns with the sun. I can’t promise to be up and across the street on Sunday ’cause I’m fairly sure my compostable container will still be on standard time, but by next weekend, I’ll have adjusted to the switch and be on the beach first thing Saturday morning.

Daylight Savings Time? Bring it!

Retreat Into Art

Poetry. Cake decorating. Architecture. Painting. Metalwork. Jewelry. Quilting. Photography. Everyone can do something artistic. People say to me, “I could never write a book.” To which I say, “You can do something else.” (And I guarantee it’ll be something that I can’t.)

At coffee with my wee sister one day, I told her about the card I was making for our younger older brother’s birthday. At that stage, I’d not yet decided on a drawing, so I said to her, “If you get an idea, let me know.”

She kinda smirked and replied, “I’m not that creative.”

Wrong-o, kid. I reminded her of her flair for interior design (she has a great eye for colour) and the garden she used to keep in bloom throughout the seasons. She thought for a second, then said, “I liked to plant things to see what they’d look like, or if I could keep them alive.” Which she usually could. She likes to paint walls, too, if she could do so uninterrupted. She has kids and critters and a job, so her creativity goes unrecognized, but it’s there. Every one of my siblings has some creative ability whether or not they realize it, and we all share warmth, wit and wonderful parents. Dad is an artist/writer/dreamer; Mum is a gift unto herself, but was always baking, knitting, or sewing, and loved to play her piano while she raised her kids.

Making time for creativity is the trick. In an über-busy world, too few of us earn a living from our passion. Creativity is notorious for producing poor to no income, but that’s what hobbies are for. The lucky ones make it their reality. The rest of us make it our escape from reality. Either way, how dare anyone claim that art is expendable! Without art, there is no life, no will, no courage, no joy … no point.

Just sayin’.

Girl Friday

the view from my table

The problem, if it can be called a problem, with a day off is that my mind races frantically to jam as much pleasurable activity as possible into a finite number of hours. I ask Ter to drop me at the Moka House for tea and a blog entry, then I panic because I should be doing the bi-weekly dusting.

I can do that when I get home, of course, but that cuts into my writing time. And what about the “spa bath” I owe myself? Or baking the applesauce muffins I’ve been craving? And how many episodes of Ashes to Ashes can I manage before the sun breaks through to create a golden photo op in the garden? I want to read, too, being nearly done with Anne Rice’s latest …

It helps that, while I debated bringing the Canon on my morning tea/blog flânerie, Ter told me point-blank to “slow down, you’re trying to do too much.” It helps, too, that they’re playing Ella Fitzgerald at the coffee house; I pause to listen whenever I hear her smooth, buttery voice. And I am reminded of the Zen saying, “Nature does not hurry, yet all is accomplished.” Still, my “want to do” list is too long, so the next platitude is “pick the most important thing and the rest can wait.” Which is true. The most important thing is a no-brainer: write, write, write. and remember: the weekend lasts for more than one day.

So a reassuring thing happens as I sip my Asian Misto and tap my foot to Ella: I watch traffic speeding through the village and people with their knapsacks and travel mugs pounding along the sidewalk, and I wonder … What’s the rush?

Hickory Dickory

Time is constantly proving its irrelevance. Our lives are dictated by it, but it is a trickster, an illusionist given license to run the modern world—and aren’t we the fools for giving it such power?

Time is unstable. Unreliable. It makes us chase it, then drags its heels like a petulant toddler. It is easily lost when we’re deep in our bliss and rudely intrusive when a workday dawns. We panic when we’re late and bored when we’re early. We eat “because it’s time”, go to bed “because it’s time”, and if we don’t, if we heed our natural rhythm by eating when we’re hungry and sleeping when we’re tired, we mess up the clock and confuse our own bodies into the bargain.

Even the calendar is evil because a child should be born when it’s ready, not pulled from the womb because it’s “overdue”. “Overdue” simply means that predicting a birth date is like predicting the weather: not an exact science. Pity the babes born by appointment. Their first experience in this life is to be roused before they’re ready.

And daylight savings time? Please. Critters and crops have no idea what time it is, and less reason to care, so the old story about it benefiting the farmers is meaningless. As for saving energy by giving us an extra hour of daylight, hello? Light earlier in the morning means dark earlier in the evening and, seriously, summer days are by nature longer than winter days, so why bother when people are more disoriented and accident-prone in the week following a time change than by the usual mix of sleep deprivation and prescription medication?

If I sound crabby—and I believe I do—DST ended last night and my already hormonally-challenged biochemistry has been knocked further out of whack as a result. It will take a week for my system to adapt. I try to accept change because I can’t, well, change it, but I appreciate it more when the change makes sense.

Daylight savings no longer does.

Timely Advice

It never fails. Chuck Wendig’s blog is hardly a daily stop on my net-surfing routine, but when I am prompted to drop by www.terribleminds.com, I invariably happen upon advice that pertains to something I’ve been pondering.

Case in point: my ongoing struggle with finding/making time to write. It’s not that I am short of ideas – to the contrary, I’m marinating a couple of beauties as I type, along with trying to complete “Black in Back” and redirecting the novel that’s fallen so far off course I’ll need a Hummer and a hydraulic winch to get it back on the road. I like to blame my day job for much of my frustration. “If I had more time …” “If I didn’t have to work …” “If I could get some momentum …” yaddayaddayadda … Yup, that bi-weekly paycheque and promise of a pension has sure jammed a stick in my creative spokes, but what is a writer to do when writing doesn’t pay the bills?

Not that I was openly musing on the matter yesterday. I had a few minutes and no one else is blogging right now – George Martin is travelling the globe, Erin Morgenstern has taken August off, and Nic has been so quiet that I fear she’s succumbed to the same demon that dogs me: a day job that sucks up your will to do anything more than crash with a bag of chips in front of the TV every night. So, with a few minutes between crises yesterday, I dropped over to Chuck’s place and discovered this post by guest blogger Tom Pollock, entitled “Writing Around a Day Job”.

Are you kidding me????? Well, of course not; lots of people are stuck doing what they must instead of what they’d rather, but I found hope in these four simple points:

Plan your time. He writes Monday and Wednesday nights, and during the day on Sunday. I’m supposed to write on Sunday, but have given up getting momentum on one day a week. That means I’ve almost given up, period.

Stick to your plan. I repeat, he writes Monday and Wednesday nights and during the day on Sunday. Invitations to socialize are politely declined or alternative dates suggested. He writes for eight hours a week; so could I, if I follow his example with two weeknights and my regular Sunday.

Don’t let writing turn you into an asshole. I fear Ter could address this item more objectively than I can. While a scheduled routine will protect your writing from your life, it can also protect your life from your writing. Pollard wisely says, “You won’t actually get any more done if you’re worrying about how you’ve fucked up all the human connections in your life. The fact that writing is not the a1 priority in your life does not mean you won’t get it done.” He goes on to say, “Prioritize the people. They’re more important.” So are Flyer games and Sleepy Hollow.

And finally … Enjoy it. Lately, I haven’t. Lately, it’s been work. Lately, I’ve been so frustrated that I want nothing to do with it, and that’s a bad, bad sign.

So, how do I get it back? Can I build and sustain momentum with a few extra hours on a couple of strategically-spaced weeknights? Can I shed the shackles and rediscover the joy in blasting out as much as I can, ignoring both time and my inner editor? And can I do it without alienating the people who mean more to me than writing ever will?

My two-week vacation starts on the 25th. It’s easy to write full time on vacation, especially when I’m on to something new and shiny, so the test will come after I go back to … the Day Job.

Spring Forward

*sigh*

I am reminded of a quote by pirate Captain Jack Sparrow:

“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.”

Every spring, I am faced with Daylight Savings Time. Every spring, I despise it for days in advance and fight it for days afterward. This spring (this weekend, in fact), I have tried to roll with it, but old habits die hard and losing that hour in the morning really does mess with my chemistry, biology and mathematics.

My spirit doesn’t care. My body most definitely does, and my mind is practically lathered with it. Life is confusing enough; why must we confuse it further by playing with the clock? Ours is the only dimension where time matters, and boy, do we make it count. Aside from the almighty dollar, time is the thing that rules us. We’re always watching the clock, scheduling appointments, afraid we’ll be late, forgetting to set the PVR or to watch what we’ve recorded because we can’t find the time, stressing with insomnia because the alarm is going off in two hours and forty-seven minutes … ARG!

So, am I making this a problem? Or am I simply acknowledging that there is a problem? I am never happier than when I lose track of time. My natural rhythm takes over and I eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m sleepy, and write until I’m faint from lack of one or the other.

My intention is always to spend less time being aware of the time, so how do I get past DST?

I guess I’ll just have to give myself time.

Fall Back

You can relive the past … by an hour, once a year. I relive that hour by sleeping through it; not exactly a waste, but sure to mess up my body clock the next day.

I woke up at 6:00 a.m., which was really 7:00 a.m, but didn’t stop me from thinking, F***, it’ll still be dark when the alarm goes off tomorrow. I got up at 7:00, which was really 8:00, and Ter was up a half-hour later, which was really a half-hour earlier, since she usually sleeps until 8:30 on a weekend. Yesterday, she did. Today, we’re all screwed up so it doesn’t matter.

At 10:00, my stomach started thinking about elevenses. I made myself wait until 11:00 for tea, which is really noon and almost time for lunch. Now elevenses are done and Ter has gone to get groceries. She’ll be back in a couple of hours. That’ll be 1:30ish, which will really be 2:30ish, so we’ll be eating lunch at 2:00, which is really 3:00. 3:30 tea will happen at what was 4:30 yesterday. Then sun will start setting around then, throwing us further off track. Dinner at 6:00, which is really 7:00, followed by evening tea at 7:30 which is really 8:30, then bed at 9:00 which is really 10:00, and since my body will think it ate late and I never sleep well on a Sunday night because I know I have to wake before I want to in the morning, it’s going to be a lonnnnng night.

Why do we mess with the clocks again? Saskatchewan doesn’t bother. Smart Saskatchewan. We’re not saving anything. It might be lighter in the morning, but that only makes it darker at the other end. Nature doesn’t care what time it is. Critters only know sleeptime, playtime and dinnertime. Same with babies and little kids. They run on their own clocks. Why don’t we? Granted, I could be living in Dickensian times, when the employee paid the employer for the privilege of 8 twelve-hour workdays per week, but are they really getting their money’s worth when I drag my sleepy cranky butt to the office before the sun is up? I don’t know how the Nordic cultures endure it. Mind you, I don’t know if they bother turning the clock forward or back, either. Dark is dark, people. It’s winter – or close enough. Fooling the clock isn’t fooling anyone.

An aimless, somewhat acerbic rant, I know. But I’m already tired and tomorrow is frikking Monday. I have a big-fun periodontal consult at 2:00, which will really be 3:00, so I won’t get home until … dark.

*sigh*

"What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?"

The alarm didn’t go off, so she missed the bus and was late to work. Her nine o’clock meeting started without her and ran into her ten o’clock coffee date, which was cut short so she could make her doctor’s appointment at eleven. She sat in the waiting room for ninety minutes, fuming because she only wanted her prescription renewed and she wouldn’t need the stupid pills anyway if these things could be done over the phone.

She spent ten minutes with the doctor, then stepped into the bright afternoon sun. Lunch on the run was a hot dog bought from the cart on the corner. No onions, just yellow mustard and neon green relish. She enjoyed the first bite and wolfed the rest. The lineup at Starbucks was ten minutes long; waiting on her green iced tea took another ten. A friend from her old office caught up to her in the crosswalk and kept her chatting when they reached the other side of the street. Her grande iced tea was almost gone before she finally got free to drop off her prescription. Her two o’clock at the Heuer Building was looming … she thought. She’d lost track of the time between the hot dog and the pharmacy, and her Blackberry was sitting—goddamn it!—on her desk. And, wouldn’t you know, City Hall had let the battery run out on the clock tower. Could she make it to the office and collect her BBY in time for two? What time was it, anyway?

Everyone around her was rushing, plugged in or texting, oblivious to anything but keeping up with the flow. If she stuck out a foot, she might catch someone with a smart phone or a working watch, but she might also cause a chain reaction pileup on the sidewalk and get sued. Wishing she had refilled her prescription before the pills ran out, she glanced frantically about for a willing Samaritan and spied a tall drink of water taking a break from his kitchen gig at the pub on the opposite corner.

He had a cigarette in one hand and a raggedy paperback in the other, the book tipped away from the sun so his sight wouldn’t suffer for the glare. As she approached, he actually heard her and raised his head. He was cute, too; blond and tawny with broad cheekbones and a killer smile.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said at five paces.

“No bother,” he assured her, straightening. “How can I help?”

“Do you by chance have the time?”

His smile widened. “Time for what?”

Flustered to a new level, she managed a nervous laugh. “I mean, do you know what time it is?”

“Oh.” He wore no watch, she saw, and was about to say forget it when he tilted his face to the sky, contemplated the position of the sun among the streaky clouds, and announced with a grin, “I’d say it’s round about Now.” 

copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig

* * *

If there’s a point to this piece, it’s that so much time is spent worrying about time that time passes without us being engaged with it. I get frazzed about it like everybody else, but wherever possible, I let go and trust that I’ll get everything done in due course. I once saw a saying on a sandwich board in the village and it stuck with me:

“Nature does not hurry, yet all is accomplished.”

Mind you, Nature doesn’t work for the government …