This morning while I made tea I was wondering what day it was. Oh yeah. Thursday. Was that right? Yes, yes, I'm sure: Thursday. And then as the tea steeped, I turned and looked at the pattern of sunlight on the wood floor, an autumn pattern; light doesn't slant just that way on just that spot at any other time of year. So I knew it was autumn. Now I sip tea and look out the window at the honey locust tree just beginning to turn, a small yellow patch here, a sprig of yellow there. What year is it? 2010. No! Yep, uh-huh.
I'm not losing my mind. I know perfectly well where I am in the flow of time - when I stop to think about it. Because I don't work in an office anymore and rarely work to some time-driven deadline, I do have to check my iPhone sometimes to know the date. But for the most part - why? I stopped wearing a watch a long time ago, except when I want to wear my kokopeli silver cuff watch like a bracelet. For all I know, the time part stopped working; I don't know - I haven't checked.
Even now as I write, I'm doing that drift that I do - maybe that we all do - like getting lost in our thoughts and suddenly coming to and wondering how we got to the thought we catch ourselves in. And what does all this have to do with Torvil and Dean?
Steeping tea for a certain number of minutes (four for black tea) is a great time to let my eyes wander and my mind to do whatever it wants to do. Black tea takes four minutes to steep to that perfect fullness without getting bitter. That's how long it takes. You can't rush it. Summer turns to autumn in its own way, every year similar, every year with a bit of difference. In the early 90s, it snowed here on Labor Day weekend. But we still know it's autumn. So I'm allowing the tea to get perfect and I'm thinking about time: Thursday already, autumn while my back was turned, and impossibly - 2010. Does time slip? I wondererd? Slide? The words to a Simon and Garfunkle song came to me: "Slip slidin' away - the nearer your destination, the more you're slip slidin' away."
But life isn't like that for me. I guess it would be if I thought of death as a destination. Sure, I know I'll die and now that Dad is gone, surely I'm next, but no, "slipping" doesn't feel right, and "sliding" doesn't sound right, and "slip sliding" is just wrong. And then I thought of Torvil and Dean winning the Gold in ice dancing in Sarejevo in the 1984 Olympics. I sat on a sofa in a friend's house that night, leaning forward to catch every move, crying for the beauty of their genius. Watch it and tell me if you see what I see: birth, life, love, death, all in a seamless flow that is undeniably right.
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