The Snooze Button is a Lie

I know it's late. Or is it??

I went and saw "The Raven" at theatres and was successfully deterred from eating right afterwards. That's beside the point though. The point is I went and saw the Raven, and then I had some left over homemade pizza when my appetite returned, and as I was sitting down and eating a pepperoni, I realized that tivo was uploading onto the the Telly because (as I suspect) a certain dog must have hit the power switch on the power cord.

On the screen, there it was. "Almost there, just a few more minutes." And I looked at my phone and it said 9:11 (no joke, it really did). And I thought to myself, "alright, I bet it is working by 9:15. Just 4 minutes." But as I sat there, four minutes felt like forever. And then I thought that over a bit as the "almost there" slogan continued to taunt me on the screen.

Here's what went through my mind in those few minutes.

If you had four minutes to say goodbye to someone you'd see in an hour, that would be the longest goodbye. If you had four minutes to say goodbye to someone you'd never see again, that would be too small a time to say goodbye.

If you had four minutes to kiss a boy who you really disliked and who brought to mind lots of fowl words, that's four minutes of torture. But if you had four minutes to kiss the boy who brought to mind nothing, because he made you forget your words, then that's four minutes of heaven.

If you were told that in sixteen years, you'd be celebrating another birthday, you'd think nothing of it. No need to plan the cake now, that is forever away from now (40th birthday for me). But if you were told that in sixteen years, your family would be planning your funeral, you'd obsess over every single day knowing and honestly believing that sixteen years isn't enough time.

If you had one minute to grab your backpack and  meet some amigos at the library to study, you'd be walking. If you had one minute to grab your backpack and meet some professor in class for an exam that your alarm clock kind of forgot to wake you up for, you'd be running, screaming at your alarm clock, and praying for diving intervention.

Time is a funny thing. It really is.

I guess you could say I've under appreciated time, a couple of times...

I've squandered minutes, and hours, and days, and once a whole month. No joke, last October might not have even existed I spent so much time studying and not watching the clock.

We only count the seconds when it is convenient to us. When we want something now, a minute becomes an hour and we greedily count every passing second until our time has come. And when time is not in our hands, and it is not moving around our wants or our needs or out motives, we let it go unnoticed, and the seconds, and minutes, and hours, and days blur and disappear.

That's what makes time fast or slow. When "nothing" seemingly happens in our lives, we say time has moved slowly. When "everything" is happening in our lives, we say time moves too fast.

Maybe watching the clock, being aware of the time, that's what makes it go slower. Because it matters, it becomes something of significance. Four minutes to "waste" saying goodbye to someone is four minutes too much of your time, and so it goes by as you ramble and let the time go, but it goes by in slow motion, because you keep hoping it will speed up and move on faster as to convenience you. But Four minutes to say everything of worth to a person you'll never see again. You watch every second, the way it ticks, bends, what ever else a tick does...you'll notice it. You'll make every second count. And so it moves slowly as you watch it, but as it moves, it moves faster and faster because in your heart you want it stop, you want it to rewind, but in reality, it moves forward like it always has, and because it is against everything you want, it comes too fast.

We hold time, we hide time, we push it, we pull it, we manipulate it... that's all the snooze button is. It's just a button that was created to make you feel like you're cheating time, sleeping in, when in reality, you probably set it 30 minutes early. So in those thirty minutes when you should have just slept soundly and then woken up, you lost 30 minutes of real, quality sleep to feel like some kind of time god. congratulations.

The snooze button is a lie. If nothing else, remember that.

But, if you'd like something a bit more substantial, I guess the most obvious is that if you're wasting time because it isn't revolving around you, you might want to back up, rewind, and reconsider how your spending the seconds you have. Now, it seems irrelevant, but when those four minutes, or 16 years, or 1 minute are counting down to the last seconds, I'm sure in retrospect you'll either be thankful, or sad that it's over and you missed it.

Birches

I like most that when I sit at my desk to write, I'm overlooked by tall oaks, and sweet gums, and other trees I cannot name, all just outside of the window. When I look out at them, they create such a thick green curtain that I cannot see houses or roofs. They make their own village, and they create such a collage of greens: mint greens, and hunter greens, and lime greens,and olive greens. And they wave their branches to the other in such cordial hospitality that I am taken to their front doors and forget that I am, still, sitting at a desk looking out of my window.

When  I was younger, there was a particular tree in my yard to which I gave the name, my star tree. My star tree was just a sweet gum, but as a child, the star-like leaves were enchanting and replaced "Sweet gum" entirely. I'd climb most afternoons high into the limbs and I'd hoist books up by rope and read about peter rabbit, or I'd lie and daydream, or I'd talk to the limbs.

I'd ask my star tree how it was. I'd tell it about my days. I'd say most anything to it.

Looking back, it was a sweet, childish thing to do. I don't climb my star tree any more. I broke most of the limbs when I was younger, and others died with time, so that now it would be fairly difficult to climb into it without a ladder.

In fact, I haven't climbed a tree in a very long time if you wish to know the truth. I've played with the idea, but I haven't really climbed high into a tree since I was a kid.

If you haven't read it, Robert Frost wrote an entire poem about climbing high into birches as a young boy.

"So I once was myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be."

I am not going to admit to fully understanding Frost's thinking when he wrote the poem. But what I gather from its contents is that trees offer another world to those who dare to climb into them. A chance to get away, to sit still as the cars, and the neighbors, and the neighbor's dogs, and the sun goes by.

"I'd like to get away from earth awhile.
And then come back to it and begin over."

I think children are gifted with the ability to get away from earth awhile. And I am amazed by this. Like you, I've grown up, and I am aware that as much as I can find the beauty in the trees in my backyard, I can't bring myself to talk with them anymore.

I love watching children talk to their hands, and their feet, and the toys they hold. I love watching them disappear into a world that I can't see anymore, and if I see it, it is only for a short time, and with much determination.My niece does this. She talks to people and things that I can't see, not like she does. I can pretend I do, but I don't, not really.

She laughs, and yells, and is sad, and is excited by all of the little thoughts that grow into big thoughts, and before I know it, she's created a new world and has invited me to sit and play in it. And I remember my games, and my star tree, and the little worlds I too created, and it seems so long ago. But sometimes I remember it when I look at the trees that have long and thick limbs that bow low to the ground.

It's so funny to think that we were once all children, even those of us who have mustaches, and growl at kids on their porch, and pop balloons when no one is watching. We were all once children. We all knew what it was to dream and to play and to whisper to trees. I think Frost remembered it best, and maybe he longed for it again the most.

I don't know. It makes you sad to think about the child-like faith and grace and naivety we've all lost along the way. But it makes you happy, real happy, to see children climbing up trees, talking about the fairies in the branches, and screaming at the top of their lungs with such joy and laughter that they bring that distant land, the one both terrifying and beautiful, back to you.

"I'd like to go by climbing a birth tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
 But dipped its top an set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
Once could do worse than be a swinger of birches."