Time

Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.'

`If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, `you wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.' Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

If these are postcards to myself they're telling a story I don't really want to hear, and shouldn't be hearing... not after all that I've tried to learn and change this year. Of course it's Christmas and we're all trying to make deadline, including Santa. So far the quiet and contemplative times have been a big fat zero. No just me and my camera sitting quietly, listening - being "still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. "
(Minor White)

Time and I have been competitors much of my adult life; everything I do ends up a race against Time. I am adept at overestimating my capacity to achieve, so frequently I lose. There is a tension in every day as I front up for my daily race and now, even knowing what I do, I repeat patterns of behaviour that perpetuate the cycle.

What is it about Time (oops, that should read "Society" or even "Ego") that we feel a need to fill every moment in order to feel worthwhile? The ego in control, shouting "Guilty!", "Lazy", making sure that we're up, racing Time to complete task after task to keep mind and body busy; preventing a stillness and subsidence into subconscious and intuitive states whence comes the greatest creativity.

I'm like an addict, for the first time in years finally off all Trusts and Committees and yet still finding myself volunteering to race Time yet again one way or another.

Thoughts about racing time prompted tonight's blip as we sat down for 5 minutes, gobbling fish and chips on the way back from the market, to avoid having to eat in the car on the way home. On a seat to my left was a guy asleep on a bench in the sun, oblivious to the world around him and looking so peaceful; in front a family enjoying a leisurely meal together. My mantra from now on must be to stop trying to beat Time; to be that guy on the bench whenever it feels necessary.