Day 357 Time

December 1, 2015

(If we live with an open and grateful attitude, every day will bring a gift. This is one of 365 gifts during the year I turned 70.)

Days with no defined lines between sun and shadow, days with no contrast—this is when time slides imperceptibly like raindrops down the window of life. Time glides and slides, one hour into another until I suddenly realize that the day has disappeared and drained all the minutes with it.

This passing is like a cat’s purr, blending into a raindrop’s dampness. There is comfort in knowing that the tides continue to rise and recede, in knowing that one day will follow another. And there is an excitement in questioning, in not knowing, whether tomorrow will be a dark day that slides or a bright one that offers clearly defined lines. It is a comfort in knowing that on some days I can create playful shadows while on other days I can retreat and just be. Like the tides, life has an ebb and flow, a rhythm that continues like the breath which rises and falls.

It is interesting how dreary rainy autumn days make the reds, oranges and yellows appear brighter as if these colors were compelled to poke holes in the damp grayness and give balance. Today raindrops gently kissed the remaining red geraniums in the flower box outside my front door. A few weeks ago, I thought it was the end of their season but today I see they still thrive. Even new buds wait, hoping for a warm greeting soon. 

I soak contentedly in time. 

My gift today is being.

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> Day 358: Passing

You can find links to my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html

              

Day 330 Alas, Deer Yorick

November 4, 2015

(If we live with an open and grateful attitude, every day will bring a gift. This is one of 365 gifts during the year I turned 70.)

A few deer bones among the fallen leaves

It seemed a waste not to go walking outdoors on a day like today, so David and I set out from our house to a few blocks away where we could enter a heavily wooded area, Anne Arundel County property managed by the Department of Natural Resources. There was a warning sign posted that it would not be safe to enter on a few particular days where there would be open hunting to help control the deer population. I am glad that today was not one of the posted days. 

Today we noticed that what used to be visible paths a few years ago no longer existed. There has always been an absence of trail blaze markers and this time we encountered lots of fallen tree parts, sticker bushes and even mushrooms growing on what used to be a trail. We explored with an eye to the topography and sun position. 

We stopped to examine what appeared to be the remains of a deer, dry white bones picked clean long ago.  In our neighborhood “wild woods,” we walked to the sound of crunching leaves and only a few remaining crickets. “Stop and listen,” David urged. We stood still and heard the delicate sound of leaves falling all around us. Our adventure today—the bones, crunching leaves and diminishing daylight—was a reminder of temporal days and ever-changing time. We could hear the falling leaves today but in the next season, we will listen to the falling snow.

My gift today is the sound of falling leaves.

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You can find links to my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html

Day 230 Ephemeral

July 27, 2015

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70^th year where I write and illustrate a blog on each day’s gift.)

The National Gallery of Art exhibit, The Memory of Time.  
“I stop being just the observer of light, as it spills into the house and moves through it in the course of the day. Here I have become a participant in creating these images of light  I am moving the curtain to change the formation of a line of light that starts out being razor-thin and over the hours grows into a thick band of light.” ~ Uta Barth

The relationship of time and truth to photography continually prods me. With some hubris, I delude myself that I have power over time with a slight movement of a finger on a shutter. I believe that I can capture the present—a moment of meaning—and suspend it within time’s dervish. Light waves of truth bend around my perception. In the future, I can return to this past and re-arrange it to create my own reality. When photographing, I am always in the present but when looking at photos, I am in the past.

Today I saw a thought-provoking photography exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, The Memory of Time. The introduction describes it as “…work by artists who investigate the richness and complexity of photography’s relationship to time, memory, and history.”

From a very early age, I have always held a sensitivity to the power of light and shadow. Lives slide through this narrative landscape of light and shadow but the edges never remain the same because light constantly moves. Maybe this is why I was especially struck by Uta Barth’s triptych of light entitled “to draw a bright white line with light.” She immerses us in the transient nature of light and shadow. I stepped back to take a photo of the three photo panels with David standing in front of them. 

Truth is always a subtle blurring of time, light and memory.

My gift today is The Memory of Time.

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> Day 231: Coming Home

You can find links to my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html

Time, Numbers, Lists and Questions

A few days ago, on August 28, 2013, I calculated that I have lived for 25,098 days.

This number, 25,098, sparks some questions. What if I were to live as long as my mother did and no longer? My mother lived for 28, 259 days, the last several years of her life filled with the challenges of living with diabetes and Parkinson’s.

How much time might I have left if I were to follow my mother’s path? My sloppy math suggests that I have approximately 3,161 days left of my life. That translates to 75,864 hours. If I assume that I will sleep eight hours each day, then that leaves me with 50,576 waking hours or the equivalent of 5.77 years of wakeful time left. 

Wow! That’s not long at all. How am I going to spend that time? What do I want to accomplish yet before my footprints fade?

Hmmm. I think about how many hours our TV runs all day and night. Let’s just say that I will watch four hours of TV a day. Or maybe two hours of TV and two hours checking on my Facebook friends, reading e-mail and learning new things on the computer. That will leave me with roughly 4.33 equivalent years to fill with other things. 

Then I continue thinking about how I want to be as happy as possible for my remaining days and also maybe leave some part of me behind. Every five years or when I feel my life is out of balance, I make a list of what I need to be happy; it helps me to see what I need to adjust. My most recent “happiness” list includes these multi-faceted elements: love, creativity, adventure, connections/acceptance, solitude, learning, independence, beauty, dreams, balance/stability.

More questions invade my thinking as I envision the hands of the clock whirling faster and faster.

How much time each day do I allow for the things that make me happy and for the dream of leaving behind an important part of myself?

How much does television and social media contribute to my happiness?

Do I want to spend these last precious years accumulating and dealing with things? What things, literal and figurative, can I discard that clutter my life? (I should have added to my happiness list that I need space…not a lot but enough to feel I’m not being invaded by stuff. This will allow more metaphorical space to open up which nourishes spirit.)

And one final question--how much time have I taken to contribute to someone else's happiness? 

Friday and Heaven's Pearly Gates

Heaven ©Bonnie J. Schupp

Today? How can it be Friday already? I blinked and another week passed!

I’m in the third quarter of my life, or the fourth quarter, depending on how long I might live. Days no longer stretch out like forever long strings of taffy as they did when I was a young child. Now the days remind me of my 5-year-old self who would begin running downhill and eventually the run grew out of control and my legs couldn’t move as fast as the hill was descending. Of course, I’d eventually fall. It was inevitable.

Eventually my taffy strings will break, my “legs” won’t be able to keep up with my subjective time and I’ll fall.

At age 65, with a time perspective different from that of my childhood, and as I experience the death of family members and friends, I sometimes  think about my own departure from the life I know now.  As a child, I learned that we live a good life today and then in the next life there will be a good life in heaven—forever.  

That was comforting but very distant. Today I realize that nobody knows the “beyond” answers. And, really, I don’t care if there is a heaven or not. I  live the best life I’m capable of living—now. Afterward, as the old song says, “que sera, sera.”  

I don’t dwell on the beyond but today I read two thought-provoking discussions of heaven and death (unusual day to begin my day, right?):

One makes the case that even if there is a heaven, it might not be so great.

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/pearlygates.html

The other talks about how atheists might find it easier to cope with death than those who believe in an afterlife.

http://www.alternet.org/story/148825/why_atheists_are_better_prepared_for_death_than_believers?page=1

Interesting...but now it’s Friday and I have a lot to do...

© Bonnie J. Schupp

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