time out

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Three days off, at home. It's warm enough to sit in l'atelier after a cold winter, though a chill remains. Bugs have come inside, and died. (I posted this photo at small.) I opened a window and could hear and watch birds finding live bugs in last year's garden. I cut lilacs and set them in front of the screen door where the breeze could sweep the room with their fragrance.


I sat nestled in my Indian crazy quilt, with another blanket on top of me, and watched prisms from the leaded window dance on the pine floor. I read Anne Michaels' new release, The Winter Vault. I had visions of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the displaced towns and villages in its progressive path. I slept and dreamt about Egyptian pharoahs, five kinds of date palms and floating down the Nile in a houseboat.


Or was I really floating?


The second day off I did my morning blog browsing and thought I'd open the New York Times online. When I was greeted with their new frenetic Twittery nytimes/timeswire box rapidly flashing numbers of times the site has been updated in the last hour with the question "HOW MANY HAVE YOU MISSED?"

I thought: What is happening to us? Are we so afraid of missing one crumb of information? What about understanding what is here, what has been here hundreds and thousands of years?

When my time out is over, and I'm back in time's sortings, I'm more determined than ever to balance days with mini time outs. Stop. Look. Listen. I think I learned that in kindergarten.