EVERYDAYNESS

Time is a mystery that has haunted and intrigued me since my third year.   Come to think of it, space or more specifically distance is an equally great mystery. There is an obvious relationship between the two and yet they have an almost yin/yang quality. As a child, standing outside on a dark night, I would look up and around at the stars and wonder if there was anything beyond them. When I asked how far away the stars were, my dad told me they are thousands and sometimes millions of light years away. That was a question about both time and space. What would endless time and space be?

 For a while, I would deliberately sneak out at night to look at the stars while imagining what could be beyond millions of light years, beyond and beyond and beyond until I was too dizzy to stand up. I would stumble inside with my head spinning, intoxicated but glad to be in a world my senses could cope with. 

The past is a time associated with a place that we can only visit in memory. Yes, we can often find the place again but not as it was in the past. However, we wouldn’t be the same person who was there the first time. Time and place are always just beyond reach. Like a mirage, they can never be caught.

Our Friend Miles Merritt Caught
this Mysterious Guy on His porch. A great
Power Sign at the End of the Year

Sometimes the light has a certain quality, or something in the air casts me back to a particular time and place.  It’s odd, because the actual location and its environment may be quite different but its quintessence conjures a memory and it is almost like time travelling.  Realistically of course, that previous place in time is more like a double exposure on an old photo film. The present is always in the background preventing a clear look at the past. Most people look at it the other way around and believe the past distorts the present, but really, it goes both ways. 

This next to last day of the year is dragging down as if the year 2013 has run out of energy and can barely make it to the finish line.  We haven’t gone outside our house for two days. I’ve had a minor flu but I believe that is due to the same end of year drag. It’s as if everything around us is waiting for a switch. Winter is the time for resting out of sight and it really seems that the past week has been a quiet time.  At Taos Pueblo, they make a place for quiet time religiously. Everything human is dormant like the grass and trees. No building projects, loud noises or driving about within the Pueblo walls. This makes sense to me. Although at local bars and homes there will be loud parties with loud music and party noisemakers at midnight tomorrow evening to welcome in a 2014, I suspect it’s an attempt to feel more alive this time of year. 

I almost forgot why I started this story. This morning I woke up thinking about Everyday feelings. I have been through enough days now to know that Everyday is not at all stable but vulnerable to constant flux.  Nevertheless, the comfort of those Everyday memories is real.  They are like markers in direction that keep me oriented right side up during times of rapid change. This morning, the light was just right to create a double exposure experience of now and another time at the start of this day.  But what other time was it that initiated this experience? When I go into the picture, it seems to be a winter day in the mid-eighties. 

I was living with two friends in a large house in Park Hill, an older part of Denver two blocks from City Park, the Zoo and the Natural History Museum. It was a time of personal exploration and growth. I also had the only job I’ve ever had with a decent salary and benefits. I hated the job but learned to live during weekends. I took in numerous workshops and conferences and then decided to enroll in CITP (Colorado Institute of Transpersonal Psychology). Externally that was a mistake. It had similarities to moving to Arizona four years ago.  Both felt perfect, almost too perfect, dreamtime perfect. I didn’t have the everyday financial underpinning to make it work beyond a great start. A theme is emerging to the surface; a lifelong dance between now, then and where I want to be.  

Each piece of time caught by memories and inspired by hope is actually a successful butterfly hunt. You can pin it on the wall as something you want to look at Everyday. Perhaps knowing that I won’t need to pin any more butterflies to the wall. 

 Happy New Year! Just doesn’t cut it. This time space thing is really one of the most amazing mysteries, maybe the number one amazing mystery. Do you suppose the butterfly hunt really stops for us after we go six feet under?  Maybe we have mixed feelings about this because it’s just too big to take in, like the stars in the sky for a five-year-old kid.

2014 Bring it on!