Circadian Rhythm, or what of it.

Every so often, I'm reminded.

Sometimes the things that we rethink, whatever minor memory has escaped us for so long, such an incident, a small but life-seizing interaction, can bring us to a place of relief. Of true gratitude for what we've overcome or learned or lived through.

We have all lived through without realizing it. It comes back to us someday when we are watching nothing or laughing loudly or checking time or sitting back. Suddenly we're transported, composed by our memory alone, gently lifted back to the time we found forgiveness or absolute fear or wondered if you would ever again feel anything but sadness at the thought of your own two hands.

We are reminded that we have survived peculiar feats, such specific pains that we were convinced, we were quite certain, from which we would never recover. But we have. In time, we have been eased backwards, we have felt less. We have moved on, we have bought new furniture, we have replaced loved ones, we have taken down photographs, we have let our histories gather dust beneath our present days, we have shut our lifetimes behind doors, we have looked forward forever, until now. Until the now where we are reminded of what we come from, of what we've needed thus far.

This is the type of release that surely may bring back whatever part of that pain remains. Perhaps just the stretch that it caused us to feel, the small ache of reaching for something, for another. There is ultimately more tragedy in what we can reach but somehow still fail to grasp.

When we are back to those moments of our lives, whether the song on the radio delivered us to it, whether it was the way you held your face against the window or the sound of faint conversation that brought you back, it may feel good to see the distance between where we stand and where we've stood. It's breathing. It's solace for time spent.

We can remember our pasts continuously. We can go by each day with a new memory, an I-haven't-thought-of-this-in-years situation, and there's an awfully good chance we'll never go back to it again.

Sometimes, however, the ways we are reminded are outside of ourselves, out on the edge of elsewhere, having to do with something much larger than our own inconsistencies, misgivings, aspirations. Who we've been is no longer relevant. We are. And we reflect. And we learn from the outside world; unrelated circumstances reveal themselves in full light. We have nowhere to look but directly into it, no matter where that leaves us.

And that, I must say, is much worse.

It is far easier to be embarrassed by our own faults then to face head on the faults of living that we exist in but cannot change.

We can rewrite where we've been. We can omit certain asides, we don't have to give it all up, we can broadcast our good points, we can pick our easiest flaws, if we're feeling honest. Who we are is our choice to reveal, to those we trust, or to no one at all.

But when reality reveals itself, uninvited and, on most occasions, unwanted, it's often ugly. It's harsh lines force themselves our way. We have to stare into what we know is there, what stands so blatant and upright before us, and say things like, this is how it is, we can't change this, or, should we dare: well, life's not fair.

It's maddening, yet undeniable. What diverts the fairness from reaching us? We can understand what fair would seem to be. We can dare to imagine what it would look like, somewhat gossamery, full of unknown light. We can expect all this with sincere earnest, we can truly believe in its possibility, however many times we've been let down before. And then a simple switch occurs, and suddenly we've lost our income, our lover, our hope. We've driven over a small creature, the smallest being that only meant to safely get from one patch of nature to the next, simply crushed under anybody's tires.

Then, what's fair?

When we're reminded of things such as this, what then should we believe in learning? More, pardon me, awful things such as, All things happen for a reason, may race to our minds.

I, for one, have trouble with such certain measure.

Yes, the cyclicality of life outweighs our ability to understand it.

Still. I'd like a little truth. As much as it would surely hurt, I would like to understand why we are where we are. What happens happens, whether to us or because of us, and fair does not become our situation, not often, not today. It's the pattern to our dilemma.

We merely pulse. Carry on. Repeat.

Time, Again.

For every one thing that we do with true excellence, I think there are a thousand blanketing things that we've done without interest or joy, no meditation, no attempt to learn. Done instead out of some insinuated necessity, but without wanting it, without taking it as part of our jumbled and purposed living.

So now we have to go to work, or to school, to jury duty, to cross the street. So shift it back.

And don't worry. I'm not addressing anyone but me. If you concur at all or nod along with me, if you feel even a touch of "Well, okay," then it can be for you, too. I won't mind.

And it's not about talent. Which of course, everyone has in one way or another. Sometimes it takes forever to tap into them, catch them, if you will, hone them, demonstrate them. But they are there, waiting to be discovered and exercised, sitting on the hind legs of their ability, ready to wave, here I am, can you see me now. They are the things we do with inherent skill, with a somewhat breathtaking ease, in a way that causes your audience, your world, to stop, to stir, to soak in your resurrection or dissertation or execution.

Perhaps your talents are quiet, buried. Maybe you are a natural in starting conversation. You can do handstands, make jokes, be sincere. Maybe you strike poetry in whatever you see. Perhaps you are patient.

We could spend our hours or our lives doing things that we're simply good at, but what exactly are we good for? Just because we may do something doesn't mean we should, or just because we are doing anything doesn't mean it's what we're intended to do or how we are meant to do it.

And I think that when this is the way we arrange ourselves, the way we set ourselves into molds we can certainly contort for but not quite capture. We end up waking up numb, traveling dead.

When Henry David Thoreau compared the killing of time to the permanent debilitation of eternity, I stopped. And each time some passing person has often commented, well, at least we're halfway through the week, or, can't wait until this year is over, or, one more day until the weekend, with lifted hands of hope, I've stopped. And I've been confused. And I have been torn in my response to these reactions. I've yet to understood why we've been encouraged to merely pass our lives. To skip ahead to the better points, to wish for forwarding along, for faster pace, for seemingly dull or uninteresting moments to simply go by unnoticed.

On that note, I find it difficult even to comprehend boredom. I find it inherently impossible. With a moving world, an earth that overflows with newness, a place that expresses its constant need for us to stand at attention. To be here, and to wish to pass time? To wish for the end of the day as a new one has just begun?

Something's wrong, then.

Something is wrong with the way we are cherishing (or not cherishing) what we have and what we are doing with it.

If we don't want time, then we have not used it well. We have not seen it, really seen it, as infinitely miraculous.

I propose that we love our Tuesdays with the same unabashed ardor that we do our Sunday afternoons. Let's love winter. After we are embarrassed by our mistakes, let's remember them. Let's not wait for another day to do what matters to us right now, to do what we appreciate, to exercise our right to (dare I say it) enjoy being alive. Whatever natural rules and restrictions are above you, whatever bookends hold you in a certain corner, if some constraint should tie you or toss you, digress. It is there, and it is purposed, hopefully. It has not come to stand in your way to be. Instead, it is part of your being, difficulty and all, it is your time, it is you.

So to pass time, to kill time even. Why want to get it over with before it has been loved? Endured, often, yes, but truly full, truly magnetized for what it has given you, not what it has taken from you, rejected of you, required of you.

If Thoreau understands that our time is intentional, and if nature beats on without asking permission, then what exactly are we waiting for?

Why are we the first to create the movement, yet always the last to get on board?

No, we aren't only supposed to forever sit in a basement just painting masterpieces. Though if that is your vestal need, hold on to it. Because the best part of living is that it is balanced, even without our even footing. I'm not suggesting that we live only for ourselves or only for what we deem entertaining or easy. I'm just hoping we can find what is good in what we go through, that we'll never reach a point where we sincerely wish for the end of something, wanting to wander ahead, wanting to do without, to only carry on.

Don't wait.

Don't miss this.

But don't wait.

Wild + Precious = ?

In the acknowledgement of absence, head bowed as it may be, there is this:

Lately, I've had a thing for deliberation.

We're not exactly serious yet, we would not dare to be exclusive. But we have met from time to time, over nothing or something, we have shared a history, a knowingness, often awkward but rather intimate encounters.

We have together faced thinking about consciousness, even while in and out of it. How often we've been faced with the odd necessity of decision, forks in the road, words to live by, having a toss-up, rolling the dice. Whatever dice, any dice.

With all of this, I speak only for myself to say I haven't come to any consistent conclusions, which I find is quite usual. What I have found in light of living deliberately, or with deliberation itself, in speaking of drive or even hope, I fear our similarities: that most of us will, eventually, have unknowingly or worse, contentedly, settled for less. We will have existed, even enjoyed, without awareness, without purpose or intention.

So now I'm uncomfortable. I'm on the very edge of the edge, looking from side to never-ending side, and I'm not sure if anyone's standing here with me. I'm dissatisfied with what we wish for and what we do not chase. I am relentlessly opposed to this general preparation for better, the need we have to start small and hope big, to wait and wait and wait until our patience or, pardon me, complacency, instead becomes the very rut where we build our lives, where we cultivate our dullness, where we go no further than our own four corners.

All saving and never spending. For what?

I don't want to be a hundred years old before anything actually happens. I don't want another year or moment to go by before anything actually happens. And wait wait wait. If we're going to talk about occurrences, we might as well breach the tragic predicament of plans. Yes, I've had a thing for plans, too. And though we've since called an end to our off-and-on rendezvous, our somewhat devastating decline got me thinking. I realized how attached I was to the idea of plans. To making them, to planning to make them, to planning how they would be executed. I was thinking about how, though I had no exact timeline in mind, I had certain expectations for the past twenty and the next twenty years of my life. There were marks to hit, give or take the time or schooling or money necessary. There were relationships to foster, roots to cultivate, bonds to break, bags to pack.

There was a world I hadn't seen that demanded my witness.

The funny thing about plans, though, is that they don't matter. Dreams matter, of course. Dreams matter more than anything else you can cling to, should you cling to anything, and I will argue that case with fervency. But plotting them out with any echo of rigidity, deciding when and where and how they will come to be, will most likely leave you hanging. It will make you wonder what went wrong, when really, things only happened. People left or came or securities fell through or guarantees were not so certain or other opportunities were suddenly popping their heads out of the ground, brand new blooms staring up, seeing nothing but sky sky sky. Promising better outcomes, fertile ground, new chances.

So things changed. So plans, whatever they may be, adapted accordingly. Not willingly, at times, but they fell in line, they digressed, they shifted. They sighed and allowed.

So when life intervenes, or excuses itself, or hounds you relentlessly, what will change? Or rather, what is worth changing? What has to happen in order to make you quit your vision, to give up what you really want in exchange for what's already here? What situations will reshape your wants, will make you look to around you, to your empty hands, to convenience and say, well, okay, well this will do.

When I think of these things, these questions that leave us feeling hunted and out of time, Mary Oliver seems to understand us. And by us I mean quite every human being, as we all go racing on and on. She tends to gather our dilemmas, sort them through her musings on nature and then redirect them: to give them back to us in new packaging, wrapped precisely with new hands and new eyes.

She asks so delicately, with such intricate inquisition and sincerity,

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

She acknowledges that you've made lists, that certain checkpoints gather more urgency, that you have general ideas, that you have strong dislikes. She senses our lives as irreplaceable and sweet, with an indelible importance, with equal purpose in what is simple and what is not. Wild and precious may be her biggest compliment to us all.

I don't think she's making fun of us. I think she really wants to know. I think she wants to know if you're going to make a sandwich or read the paper or think about your first love or swear up and down to never drink again. I think our plans, to her, and now to me, involve more than working up to achieve our biggest desires. She wants to know, but what about your every day existence, the ways in which we choose to spend our time, to bask in our time, perhaps our only time, perhaps the very last chance we will ever have to fall asleep on a rainy day or write a letter to a friend now living miles and miles and miles from where we happen to be.

I don't expect too much from anyone. Oliver, I truly sense though truly only guess, feels the same. I don't want to hear about how you will change problems or solve crimes or discover cures. Even though I know you will, it is okay if these things just happen, if we all live by daily choice, if we take the pressure off, if we breathe deep and keep going.

What we want matters. What we think we will accomplish can not only motivate us, but revive us, remind us that in any attempt to discover what we're here for, maybe what we want is all we have to give here and to each other, maybe our goals, however big or small, are our ways of contributing, of progressing, of shifting back, of sharing the weight of living.

So let's live.

Also, I thank you for your patience. Words are, delicately stated, as important as they are unimportant. To me, they are everything. I don't apologize; I continue on.