grey dawning

down the trail an impromptu stream, swollen by the rain, runs at my feet. in the distance fireworks cackle loudly, the remainders of the night's festivities, and a dog furiously barks a reply in sudden shock at the peaceful holiday's disturbance.
as this new year begins, my thoughts wander to time. "in the fullness of time", perfect timing, the opportune moment, the time is now, etc. so much of life, at least especially western life, is centered around the idea that time can be harnessed and used. people plan weddings, outings, careers, lives around days, hours, moments. the successful seem always to know what time it is and where they will be next time.
then there are those, like i, that have always found time more of an enemy. it's not that i don't have enough time, nor that i cannot be on time, nor that i run out of time, but rather it's that time never seems to move with me. like mismatched pairs, i try to follow his lead but time and time again i miss a step, step on his toes, find myself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong dreams. i apologize, and hope to do better next time but...
i find myself often thinking in song lyrics. isn't it rich?...losing my timing this late in my career but i never had good timing, or a career. and when the sunlight fades to morning You'll still be burning in my eyes, Take my life, take away all the shattered dreams in me...
of course, there is the ongoing discussion of this little time in light of Time...eternity. and for all that i long for the day when i step out of my missteps and failures into perfection, i know the time given me is crucial. so perhaps that is why i look forward with agony, yes, but hope as well. this new year is a blank slate. maybe this time i will get it right.

postscript:

thoughts from _A Severe Mercy_ that relate: "...we had spoken of 'moments made eternity', meaning what are called timeless moments, moments precisely without the pressure of time--moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. Or time-free moments. And we had clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus--the bell about to ring, the holiday about to end, the going down from Oxford foreseen. We had dreamed of Grey Goose as a way to escape the pressure of time, though now one escapes entirely. Life itself is pressured by death, the final terminus. Socrates refused to delay his own death for a few more hours: perhaps he knew that those few hours under the pressure of time would be worth little. When we speak of Now, we seem to mean the timeless: there is no duration. Awareness of duration, of terminus, spoils Now."