Making time
Last August, I purchased a toddler seat for my bicycle and, to save a bit of stress, I asked the bike shop to install it for me. It took them several weeks to order, receive and install the bike seat and there wasn't a day that went by that was completely free of a bit of blue air as I grumbled about having to drive my daughter to her daycare centre rather than biking her there.
Now, in possession of the seat, I've used it about three times. It's pathetic. It's embarrassing. Every day, when I pick her up and pile her into the wagon, she looks around the parking lot, nonplussed, and asks "where's the bike?" She loved those rides, the wind blowing through her hair, the panoramic views of the park we pass through, the quick pitstop to feed the llamas (yes! llamas at the park!), the waves and smiles from passengers in passing cars. I have to mumble something to her about the lack of time - the distance from my house to the daycare centre and from there to my office means we'd have to be a bit more organized in the mornings. I'd have to get out of bed even earlier, which would mean getting to bed a little earlier, which would mean doing less of those few things I can manage to get done by myself, in my 'grown-up time' after all children are in bed. In short, I've got too much going on, too little time for everything, so I have to compensate by chewing up space. We pay for time by contracting space and we do that by consuming energy. It's all pretty basic physics.
What if I refused to make those kinds of bargains with space and time? Much would change. It isn't so much that I would do less (though by the standard of measure I'm using currently, I would certainly be 'doing' less) as that the structure of my days would change. With the increase in time and effort involved in each change of location, I would reflect more deeply on each such movement. The movements themselves would change in character as well, becoming less like finely edited camera transitions in a movie, and more like the most substantial elements of my day. By tying physical space back into a proper rhythm with the passage of time, perhaps I could find a way to relinquish my grip on both of these things. Rather than skittering along the surface of life, scrabbling from one appointment to the next, I could try to ride a natural wave of time, nestled in the wide arms of a space centred on real Earth, rather than the made up space of my mind. In the unfolding narrative of my life, my movements would become verbs rather than punctuation marks.
Can I do this? Given who I am, what I believe, and what I'm trying to do, how can I not try?
As these thoughts pass through my head, the strangest thing has happened. For reasons unknown, I've just opened my desk drawer and I've pulled out an old silver device. It's a Minerva map measuring instrument. It belonged to my father. A few days after he died, my family gathered around boxes of his possessions, taking turns pulling one surprising object after another out into the open, joining together the lines of song, story and object that defined his fantastic trajectory through life. When I saw the map measure, I remembered many long Sunday afternoons spent watching my father work at an enormous table he had set up in our basement, poring over construction blueprints, using the measure to estimate costs of building materials. I remembered seeing him doing the same thing in his office, standing in front of a large window, bent over a table, brow crinkled with concentration, white shirt sleeves held in place with the flexible stainless steel straps that kept the work surface free of dangling cuffs. The worth of his work was measured in his ability to estimate distance and cost with accuracy. I grabbed the map measure from that box and I held on to it because I wanted to keep that connection, those memories, close at hand.
At the time, it never occurred to me that the tool, its meaning, and, indeed, my father's life work, might one day have such monumental signficance in my own life and work. It's a connection to him that I never expected. I feel his hand inside mine as I hold the tool, roll it along the surface of my desk, push the reset button to feel the reassuring resistance of precision parts, my thumb making the same movement that his made, hundreds of times a day. When he was alive, he told me that he never really understood what I did. I'm not surprised. Neither did I. I think if I could have him back for just a few minutes I could offer him a better explanation than I ever did in life. But maybe it took his passing on, my moving ahead without him, and all of the self-reflection that ensued before I was able to get to that place. Until my parents were both gone, I discovered, it had been difficult to see myself through my own eyes rather than through theirs. When I no longer lived among the caresses of their forgiving glances, I had some surprising and unpleasant truths to swallow about what I was and where I was (or was not) going.
I'm going to work a little harder to wrap myself up in real space and fold my movements back into real time. Step 1. Go park the car somewhere.
Now, in possession of the seat, I've used it about three times. It's pathetic. It's embarrassing. Every day, when I pick her up and pile her into the wagon, she looks around the parking lot, nonplussed, and asks "where's the bike?" She loved those rides, the wind blowing through her hair, the panoramic views of the park we pass through, the quick pitstop to feed the llamas (yes! llamas at the park!), the waves and smiles from passengers in passing cars. I have to mumble something to her about the lack of time - the distance from my house to the daycare centre and from there to my office means we'd have to be a bit more organized in the mornings. I'd have to get out of bed even earlier, which would mean getting to bed a little earlier, which would mean doing less of those few things I can manage to get done by myself, in my 'grown-up time' after all children are in bed. In short, I've got too much going on, too little time for everything, so I have to compensate by chewing up space. We pay for time by contracting space and we do that by consuming energy. It's all pretty basic physics.
What if I refused to make those kinds of bargains with space and time? Much would change. It isn't so much that I would do less (though by the standard of measure I'm using currently, I would certainly be 'doing' less) as that the structure of my days would change. With the increase in time and effort involved in each change of location, I would reflect more deeply on each such movement. The movements themselves would change in character as well, becoming less like finely edited camera transitions in a movie, and more like the most substantial elements of my day. By tying physical space back into a proper rhythm with the passage of time, perhaps I could find a way to relinquish my grip on both of these things. Rather than skittering along the surface of life, scrabbling from one appointment to the next, I could try to ride a natural wave of time, nestled in the wide arms of a space centred on real Earth, rather than the made up space of my mind. In the unfolding narrative of my life, my movements would become verbs rather than punctuation marks.
Can I do this? Given who I am, what I believe, and what I'm trying to do, how can I not try?
As these thoughts pass through my head, the strangest thing has happened. For reasons unknown, I've just opened my desk drawer and I've pulled out an old silver device. It's a Minerva map measuring instrument. It belonged to my father. A few days after he died, my family gathered around boxes of his possessions, taking turns pulling one surprising object after another out into the open, joining together the lines of song, story and object that defined his fantastic trajectory through life. When I saw the map measure, I remembered many long Sunday afternoons spent watching my father work at an enormous table he had set up in our basement, poring over construction blueprints, using the measure to estimate costs of building materials. I remembered seeing him doing the same thing in his office, standing in front of a large window, bent over a table, brow crinkled with concentration, white shirt sleeves held in place with the flexible stainless steel straps that kept the work surface free of dangling cuffs. The worth of his work was measured in his ability to estimate distance and cost with accuracy. I grabbed the map measure from that box and I held on to it because I wanted to keep that connection, those memories, close at hand.
At the time, it never occurred to me that the tool, its meaning, and, indeed, my father's life work, might one day have such monumental signficance in my own life and work. It's a connection to him that I never expected. I feel his hand inside mine as I hold the tool, roll it along the surface of my desk, push the reset button to feel the reassuring resistance of precision parts, my thumb making the same movement that his made, hundreds of times a day. When he was alive, he told me that he never really understood what I did. I'm not surprised. Neither did I. I think if I could have him back for just a few minutes I could offer him a better explanation than I ever did in life. But maybe it took his passing on, my moving ahead without him, and all of the self-reflection that ensued before I was able to get to that place. Until my parents were both gone, I discovered, it had been difficult to see myself through my own eyes rather than through theirs. When I no longer lived among the caresses of their forgiving glances, I had some surprising and unpleasant truths to swallow about what I was and where I was (or was not) going.
I'm going to work a little harder to wrap myself up in real space and fold my movements back into real time. Step 1. Go park the car somewhere.
posted by Colin at 12:43 PM
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