gathering up

It is seasonal, I think, waking in a mist of melancholy. As if from dreaming of only sadness. As if sadness was the state of sleep itself.

I am thinking of time and my relationship to it. How if it is a resource, something to be used well or poorly, or to be "managed," it is finite. An imperial impulse. To master it. But it is not tangible, cannot be held. All I am is the time I am here. I am time, time is me.

Over the weekend, I spent the afternoons in a mending retreat (spent the time, as if currency). We gathered on zoom, from all over the world, it seemed, learned new stitches, shared samples of patterns, attempted to solve what in those few hours were the most urgent of matters: thread weight, thimble size, tears and runs, puckers and gaps. All the while, I was aware of my resistance, a low register of tension, readiness to recoil. This has been the way I have lived all these years, a tender little animal inside always on heightened alert. Such sustained vigilance is a high price to pay for the illusion of self-protection.

All this morning, rain. I hear it on the street as the cars pass. How I love the small sounds of this early hour. Radiator staccato, the house creaking and settling, its ancient joints. Something is returning to me after long months of absence. Not ready to be named or recognized, but gathering up softly.