About Time

Old Man Time, teach me how to choose between spending time with my own soul and spending time with other people's bodies.

Time is a very precious thing to give but it can be very superficial as well. Many people give eight hours a day to people they couldn't care a can of pork and beans about, people who couldn't care a can of beans and pork about them. They never have time for those who care about them and who they care about - a very unsuperficial use of time. But those who are too shy to spend time with others in body give much time to others in other ways. Ways they know how. Ways I know how: thinking, writing, feeling, writing. Ordering a big plastic eye on eBay for you implies my heart has its eye on you. Dropping a drawing of an angel into your mailbox and running away implies my spirit is always with you like an angel. But I seem to disappear when you reach out for me. And writing… writing "love you" on a dreamed post-it note and sticking it to the window of a sub conscious car. This is my drive to write no matter how simple. I always feel like I have to talk to others but I often only do so in writing.

I give 36 hours of my week to an old man in a wheelchair. This time would seem superficial if I did not grow to love this person, but I did. And I still have lots of time to write even though I'm not actually writing until I get some time off. But I never really get to take some time off from he I care about. He's in my soul and I never really have to take time off from writing to be with him. Every bit of every day he helps me compile inspiration in my heart, mind and soul for future writing. My sub conscious is going all of the time even when my conscious has to make time.

Is it art? Is it craft? Is it my job?

Beadwork: I don't do it because I don't have time. It's not priority so I don't care not to have time. But I only work 36 hours a week. What happened to the other 132 hours? Walking. Sleeping. Spending time with the people I love. And with the psychic two-headed snow dragon, I set winter on fire as I kill time in each of her seasons of beauty and brutality. With her fire and water she can read my unhappy mind to see both sides of my soul. Not everyone acknowledges that you don't have to spend time with them to spend time with them, to watch the snow fall into the future with them, to set the past on fire with them through the moving-on we draw through each breath, to see the good in the bad like picking sunflowers out of the bog. You don't have to spend time with them to love them. It is my wish to spend time with people especially if I care about them, especially if their being alone really hurts them.

If I had those six hours a day back then maybe I wouldn't mind giving an odd hour here or there to empty impulses and bored notions that merely charm my frivolities, but never make me feel like me. But now I have far more important things to make time for. I'd rather make time for things I love than things I don't. I once thought I had time to throw away on art, on music, on things I once almost loved. But now that time has become scarce and I want to do as many things I love with it as possible.

Be it through heard sounds or seen words, pretty much everybody would rather be spending their time doing things that they loved rather than things they did not.  Everybody's a writer. Everybody's a musician. Well, everybody can be a writer. Everybody can be a musician. All they need to give is a little bit of their time. But these are not superficial things so neither must the use of this time be superficial. The bluffer says I'm a writer even though he never writes. If it means so much to him then he who doesn't have the time or the soul for the gothic winged cat gargoyle spraying two naked fairies in his imagination would find the time, the soul for the gothic winged cat gargoyle spraying two naked fairies in his imagination. They would find the simple spirit to write even "love you" on a imaginary post-it note and stick to the window of intuition's car. That's a simple heart and soul of love and truth and it is the heart and soul of writing. Just like the shy people who cannot speak but find other ways to speak. Anybody should be able to find the time, the soul, the pen of time and the post-it note of soul, to write in other ways if it means that much to them.

It's not whether or not you think you're good or bad at what you love. It's not whether or not others think you're good or bad at what you love. It's how much time you put into it. It's how much of yourself you put into it. It's how it makes you feel.

Old Man Time, allow me not to take you for granted, but to respect you for the precious ghost of immortality that you are.

Elaine 07