Sparking Along at This Point in Time

[Image: “Seed,” by Nicola?s Paris. (Photo by Pedro Ribeiro Simões; found on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!)]

In recent weeks, time for me has sometimes seemed at a standstill. Or maybe, differently and more accurately expressed, I’ve felt like I’ve been in motion forever, on a treadmill, without actually getting anywhere (even though The Missus and I have of course been physically roaming about the western and central US).

It’s true: we have this summer seen some absolutely marvelous, well, marvels — both natural and human-made. (Gods, I would not have traded our couple hours among the redwoods for anything!) But the marvels have been bursts of exceptionality among rhythms of tedium and inactivity: packing and unpacking, driving for hours, deciding on meals prepared for us, worrying over finances and route planning…

But now, this week, things have changed:

At the moment, we’re in our last hotel of the entire, 400+-day road trip. When we check out Saturday morning, tomorrow, we’re heading for a few nights’ stay with some friends in Georgia, and then for a few whole weeks with family in Florida. Finally, we’re headed a couple/three states north to find a place to live, so that we may again say the words “our home” without metaphor or irony…

You’d almost think that this, from whiskey river a few days ago, must be more than a coincidental — a prescient — selection just for the benefit of the two of us:

We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience.

We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.

(Alan Watts [source])

Likewise, or at least similarly:

Midsummer, Tobago

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.

Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.

(Derek Walcott [source])

The thing about coincidences (like this week’s apparent whiskey-river-to-JES one), though, is that they, too, are illusions of time: of simultaneity or, well, continuity anyhow — continuity of effect or intention. They draw our attention, distract us, flirt with our fascination with the connectedness of things, which in turn comes from our determination to Make It All Mean Something…

Assuming no last-minute changes in our itinerary: today, we are in Tennessee; tomorrow, we will be in Georgia; next week, we will be in Florida. There is nothing co-incidental about this. That we recently visited, say, Badlands National Park is not a coincidence of our staying in Rapid City, South Dakota; that we unpacked our bags in Rapid City is not a coincidence of our having packed them in Buffalo, Wyoming. No: those actions and events were all just standalones. We could appreciate them (or not!) in their own terms, with no need to connect the dots.

That said, I am really looking forward to some timelines to replace the discrete points that have defined our life for so long.