on long time and why

Last night I sat in the bath after the children were asleep. The waxing moon above me in clear sky, the deep kind of blue that’s not quite dark stretching out for what seemed like forever. Blue and blue and penetrating blue.

The young owls screeched for food in their box. I can hear their voices getting more mature over the weeks, broader and longer.

I had spent all day at IKEA and then right to a dentist appointment. I was slightly nauseated and sore from the drone of what it feels like to live with too much noise, light, things.

I wanted the soft dark of summer to hold me. Stars, the fuzz of dew arriving. The big live oak tree was dropping leaves, acorns, I don’t know what, arrhythmic on the grass.

My shoulders were stuck at some strained angle but I just let the water touch them. I couldn’t feel outside of the moment. Each time I tried my mind would just come back: moon, owl, water, light, oak, grass, shoulder.

Mostly when I feel like this I convince myself not to get in the bath..the air is too sharp, it’s too long to get out in the water, but for whatever reason I did last night and I thought about antidotes to despair. The respite in what I am calling long time. I thought about how my people for many generations have found quiet, solace, and dare I say even hope in the knowledge of being part of rather than separate from. Being part of the story of the waves wearing down the cliffs. The collaboration of sheep and human chasing grass.

And that tending the longer time is part of the right now, however abstract it may feel. It comes alongside the pressing and urgent work of now.

This is what has been on my mind as the news cycle churns on, as I surrender to the newness of place while navigating the unrelenting pace of being in this moment on this planet in this body in this life. I think about artist and visionary, Mierle Laderman Ukeles most days as I do the care work of living….and how as she says, it takes all the fucking time.

It does but also that long time is there too. It is whispering to me as I wait on hold with the insurance agent. It caresses me with cool breath when I wake in the night. It unfurls the bright yellow petals of the calendula when the sun hits just enough. It returns.

And so I wonder where are the moments of tending the longer time? And maybe why? I think that changing this timescale is how we imagine other ways. I think this kind of tending is directly related to our becoming. I think ability to step into long time allows us to decenter ourselves as individuals, as cultural moments, as humans and lets us step into a broader sense of belonging and understanding.

It changes the imperative to one requiring devotion rather than reaction. It opens me up to the kind of change and possibility only available with enough outrageousness. What about you? Where does the long time lead you?

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Just a reminder more meditations and writing prompts can be found here! And there will be more coming.

Look out for a chapbook release party in August! Can’t wait to celebrate with those of you near and far.