Learn From It

There's a point at which an ugly on-going, ever-going present stops. The flow of time is stanched, the trailing end annealed and you call it an era. An era has ended and a new one has yet to begin. In-between times, I've called it, and in those previous times it has been a source of headache, heartache and lack of direction, as if Time Itself went into too steep a climb and Its Engine stalled out. I'm at that tipping point where acceleration up and down match and there's a net zero gravity.

But that net-zero is just a moment, if I am to be completely candid. And moments pass into the past, pass into other moments, forming into threads into strings into ropes into cables into immutability.

This time I have decided for myself to pause time itself, extending the moment into something else. We all have such trickery and power in our fingertips...to stop time, to start it again, to accelerate it and to install torpor. We all have it, but often we are able to affect others' Time more than our own. Causing anguish in another, for example, can make the passage of time interminable for her or him. Love can stop time and often does. Conviviality, joy, wonderment can speed time to the point of dissatisfaction.

So I pause, and in pausing, I do. And do nothing. It's quite a lot of effort in doing nothing about what it's all about: the heart still beats and metaphorically bleeds, but I remain standing outside the House of Time peering in the front window, a window kept clean and open in the finest of Dutch traditions.

I see and hear what moves, feel and sense what doesn't move and soon I will stop standing beside Time and jump back in. I'm eager for it, in fact!

And friends are always there, and for all the passed past, I am hoping he and I will be there in the same rooms of the heart and home once again.

Caution never felt so invigorating.