I've heard numerous comments and I have already read plenty of blogs about fireflies. I know, I know, we are all mesmerized by shiny, glowy things. So when I saw fireflies flying around in the backyard, I -like any reasonable adult- got really excited, quixotic, and decided I'd stand outside and watch them.
Watching fireflies is no good. You watch them, but all the while, you feel yourself being pulled to them, until you're holding one in your hands. And if you're really excited about them, you'll put them in a jar and keep them for yourself (hoarders).I haven't actually ever put the fireflies I've caught in a jar before. I typically hold them in my hand for a second or two, and then just let them go. But catching fireflies in grandmother's mason jar- or in my case Sarah Shine's mason jar- sounds a lot more romantic. And I am a romantic.
I found that catching fireflies with just your hands seems near impossible. Catching them with a jar is a cinch. It makes you wonder if they want to be caught...
I caught four. I could have easily caught more, but I headed back inside to test them out. I figured sleeping with little glowing lights on my writing desk would be nice, and so I went upstairs to my room, and turned the light off.
The fireflies and I both sat in the dark. Looking at one another. I can't make myself glow, and they refused. So we sat in the dark. I tapped the glass. I tipped it upside down. No good.
Sitting, they were just ugly bugs in an old jar. In the house, the magic was gone. They flew into one another, making clink clink noises against the glass as they flew into it. Clink clink clink. clink clink clink. And I was disappointed.
I shook the jar a bit more. Maybe they needed time. Maybe they only glow when there's a little more light. So I cracked the door to let some light from the bathroom in.
clink clink clink. They flew, and fumbled, and fell.
And I wonder why we love them so much. What is so wonderful about a bunch of glowing bugs. We pay exterminators to kill the bugs that get into the house, and we wear repellent, and light candles, and what not to get rid of the ones outside of the house. So why in the world are we running outside with our grandmother's priceless jars to put bugs in them??
The only thing I can think of is the light. We're drawn to light. It's warm, beautiful, and it makes us full somewhere. And we love light so much that we'd catch a bunch of bugs in a jar to keep some on a summer day.
They take us back to when magic was real. When being a kid was good. When we ate warm watermelon outside and let the juice roll down our hands, and arms, and shirts. And we'd spit the seeds out. And if we swallowed one we hoped it wouldn't grow in our stomach. They take us to somewhere hopeful and beautiful and good.
As I let them all go, the moment they left my jar, they filled with light, and glowed, and glowed, and I was sorry I'd ever put them in a jar. That I had tried to catch their little bit of magic. And that's what I love most about them, you can't catch them. Not really. You can put them in a jar, but they won't glow then. They won't do it.
I love that. I love that you can't keep them. Not forever. Not like you want to keep them. Their like a beautiful dream. Always hovering before you, but once caught, they kind of disappear back to something quite ordinary. But in the summers, every evening, just before the sun is gone, they invite you to sit and watch them. to remember good and warm and comfortable things. They invite you to a place you can't wait to return to. And every summer, as they draw nearer, you'll sit out longer waiting to see the warm glow they leave in their wake.
And when they're gone. We'll hope for them to come back.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)