I wonder if it's true that time is literally speeding up. Google seems to suggest it might be. Is the world really spinning faster or is it just some sort of brain-compounding metaphysical illusion? It certainly feels like we're hurtling through this whole process faster than ever before and I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with that sensation. Here is what I know:
- It has been 7 months since my last blog-fession.
- In just five months more I will be at that improbable milestone birthday, 35.
- Everything is changing.
More than ever, if that's possible , I find "time" to be if not a point of contention then at the very least a topic for contemplation. I dwell. I preamble. I age, most disconcertingly of all. And as I do, I find myself with one foot firmly astride two very different possibilities.
The first - my career, though I'm sure there may be a more suitable word for it. The idea of my career, which I carry around with me like a shiny pebble, still has an iron grip on me and promises to be a worthy venture, a great adventure, eventually. The second - that most pesky of adversaries, my biological clock, which seems to be suddenly acutely aware of my next birthday and urging me in all sorts of new directions. So I sit on the fence with a pebble in one hand and a clock in the other and it's all quite a giggle, really. Waiting. Watching. Wondering which of the two will have the sheer tenacity to show up sooner and shape my life to their liking. Conflicted. Excited. Uncertain. Marveling at the beauty of timing - of time - day in, day out.
I need a project. I'm anxious to sink my teeth into something that challenges and inspires me, to immerse myself in that total self-awareness that comes with stepping out on my own night after night, surrounded by friends and well-wishers, allowing myself to fall into the journey, one step at a time. Which hat next? Actor? Mother? Is it really time for something completely different? Because that happened fast.
People Like Us came from sharing the stage with a dear friend a couple of years ago. But as I'm reading it now, time-piece firmly in my pocket, I can't stop thinking about what things will be like when that next phase in my life is finally ushered in. It's funny how perception can alter, how two very different sides of myself can sit so comfortably atop one idea. It gives me hope that maybe it's not impossible to be all these things at once instead of each one of these things at a time. Maybe it doesn't have to be finite. Maybe time is more lucid, more forgiving than I give it credit for...
People Like Us...
What I have to say is stuck,
Trapped between my heart in my mouth
And an empty page,
Nervously tapping at my chest
In the moment before I take my place beside you in the dark.
Crushed by the weight of silence,
Short of breath,
Lacking strength.I am clumsy.
I am quiet.
I fall over.
And nothing comes to mind at all.
Except there's the sound of your voice
Calling me back
And teasing me gently
Allowing me the joy of spilling my heart
On the floor of this room.
Handing me your thoughts
As if they were mine.
Trusting me,
Letting them fall.
And catching each one on the way down.And so we sweep and dip and spin and play,
Holding on
Crashing down
Brief and beautiful and shining.
And I am full,
At my richest, my ripest, my most vulnerable.
Safe but uncertain.
Surrounded by people like us,
Quietly plotting to take over the world
With these words.
