time…

…is a funny thing. Not “haha” funny, more like “ain’t that a damn shame” kind of funny… The kind that leads one to drink or cry rather than belly laugh or giggle (and if one is belly laughing or giggling, it is often accompanied by the drinking and the crying). So funny in fact that I am starting to wish I was still pre-tenure, ever longing am I for the sort of busy-ness that I had grown accustomed to

And then someone tweeted this…

Outside New York, a high place where with one glance you take in the houses where eight million human beings live./

The giant city over there is a long flimmery drift, a spiral galaxy seen from the side.

— Tomas Transtromer, trans. Robert Bly

…and I received a reminder of this in my email…

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

1892

… and all is really quite well. Having retreated momentarily to my mental Innisfree, summoning my muster to see anew, ’tis only a meeting that stands in the way between me and what I hope will be at least a monthly “spontaneous” department happy hour — that seems right: following each department meeting, the secret society gathers around libations in the cloak room. Or, the copy room. Whatever’s handy. (hear me, e?)

 

Snow’s white

Snow started to fall, started to zig and zag maniacally at the whim of the winds and all at once. The first snowfall — that is, the first snow burst of the season.

This was another day that had forgotten how to end. Conversations bled into one another, the clock kept time, but an hour fast because I had not found the time to turn the hands back. For months it had been five minutes slow. And now, keeping time 55 minutes faster than everyone and everything in the surrounding office suite — somehow, that felt all right.

Finally at a few minutes past 10:00 at night, I walked out into the flake filled air and it felt like bliss. This photo — the original is below the doctored one — was one of the first I made that night with my camera’s phone. The frenetic moisture that drenched the night was no deterrence and soon after reaching home, I turned right back around — stopping only to pull on my waterproof boots and grab my slr. Those pics turned out terribly. But for those several minutes, there was no deadline looming, budgets to approve, and the like. There was just a sepia world that awaited…

…recognition.