Temporality

These days I feel the fluid, shifting qualities of the sands of time more palpably. Single moments expand to a largeness, like the sound of a crystal gong, dilating and soaking the world with their qualities.

These moments feel like an alignment to infinity. A moment of portal, passageway, an aligning of lenses, openings, when the breath of the great beyond is clearly being blown into our world.

These moments stand up on their giant legs, take up body and size in a way that feels completing, whitely nourishing, revitalizing. Like receiving a whole sun into myself for a few pale golden, neutralizing, recharging moments.

Other sections of time pass by and are forgotten to me, like small, missing personal items, single socks and colored markers and pots of lip balm. These are shed, unnoticed.

I have in mind to share this song that I wrote nearly 2 decades ago now, which describes a certain piece of temporality, of the cross-section of limits and limitlessness that informs our embodiment experience on this particular plane.

Here are two different recordings of the same piece.

Lyrics:

When I walk all alone, I feel that loneliness deep in my bones

And if the signal’s strong, I know it won’t be long until I find my song

No it won’t be long until I find my song

So I stop by the Arabic store

and I get rosewater, cloves and myrrh

And I see that big book

and I think of how long it took to find my peace

though they wrote it in gold leaf

And I know that I’ve come far

and I must be going somewhere

And I know that you’ve come far

and you’re not standing still

And I long to keep you by my side

but I know that I am wrong

La, la, la. We are one long month of june,

we will all be over soon

So I put up my painted birds

and I put up paper flowers

and I rearrange my mood to match my room

push the window open wide

and it’s cold outside so now it’s cold inside,

and honey you’ve hurt my pride

La, la, la. We are one long month of june,

we will all be over soon

(Special thanks to the Detroit painted room band: Michael Billmire, Mary Fraser, Serge Van der Voo and Merilee Phillips. And special thanks to the Interludes: Jamie Fordyce, Ken Lee and Sami Jo Buffington. Love for you all, forever and always).

My Invitation to You:

How do you feel about time? Consider Chronos, and his sometimes twin symbol Cronus, when pasted together holding both father of clocktime and devourer of sons, trapped in tartarus, known for his stone sickle of death and for his rebellion.

Also consider Kairos, the qualititave feeling of time, the sense of opportunity, perfect timing, sense of the feel of right moment.

Also pause to take in the many things that we say about time, every day. As in,

I’m right on time

I came in time

It’s a waste of my time

I don’t have time for this

Time is money

I’m out of time

There’s no time

We have time on our hands

Give me time

Time me

Perfect timing

My timing is off

No time like the present

What is time to you? What do you have to say about your own, personal relationship to time? If time is a person, how is your relationship?

  1. Begin with writing for 12 minutes about time, in any way that it comes out naturally, rhapsodic or philosophical or merely as a transcript of your thoughts.

  2. Underline and highlight any symbols which have shown their faces in your writing-stream.

  3. Choose one or more symbols and write further about these, unpacking these vertically, horizontally and diagonally, to find any associations which are resounding for you today.

  4. Finally, follow one of these threads and create a container for your esthetic responses to time.

May this be self-aligning, friend.

Thanks for reading!