oh and before i get into this, i just found (again) the flaming lips cover of madonna's "borderline". so good.
2010. Another decade behind me overflowing with encapsulated memories of time spent. A grand decade that was the kick-start and fuel that has kept my adulthood running down a path that has been flecked by exuberant and wonderful moments. Many good times in the 'right time' since I do not recall ever being given other options: something that juxtaposed the moments that were unfolding in every second and a millisecond to choose which one suited me best. All I had then was the now and the task of trying to intrinsically balance all of the things I wanted, and all of the things that I had, onto my lifeboat that would glide me through my days; my seas of change. A boat linked by tiny threads to those of my friends, lovers, family, opportunities, travel, peripherals and more people, places and things. One ready to moor with the still yet uncovered.
Balancing and pulling all of this weight is tough when you have limited time and space to fit it all into. When you don't have the time you need to figure out how it all works; how to connect them all. When the availability of one opportunity does not synch up with the availability of another. When the start of something can cause a storm if it's not at the "right" time. As the millennium began it seemed like time was never an issue. My load was a lot lighter. As I transition from 2009 to 2010 with a plethora of ways to spend time, and all this time I have already spent, I catch myself and others running into the time demon leaving me (and probably them) tempestuously spilling on and on about how "timing is everything" ; how many things in life just don't seem to come in or out at the right time...jobs, new apartments, adventures, men, women... even if they are wanted so badly that the desire is palpable.
And every time I come face to face with a set of affairs that elicit said response, I think back to something someone once wrote to me:
Timing is everything.
Too bad we are too flawed as humans to ever get it right"
Too bad we are too flawed as humans to ever get it right"
This little heavy-weight of a phrase was written on a business card given to me in September of 2007, on the brink of the second-to-last time I was "leaving" Los Angeles. Those sixteen words were inked on the back of a green, rectangular piece of thick paper stock that would stick deep into my side for what seems like an endless period of time. They serve as a constant poke in the ribs, a haunt of sorts. When they were given to me I had only experienced them through the writing of my novel... or so it seemed. My love/lust/adventure piece about two people brought together and pulled apart by life breathing through a dense fog of bad-timing and perfectly executed synchronistic acts. The well guarded baby of a semi well-guarded girl.
The term 'well-guarded' makes my mind quiver, as I am not as guarded in general as most astrological books would deduce from my day of birth, but I notice at times I put up walls when I really don't want to. It seemed to me in those days, and still today, that we could all use more time tearing down of the "walls", and leaving ourselves more vulnerable and open-minded. It seems everyone has built too many and it's getting harder to let things in. I feel like we have quickly become a generation of mistrusters. Or at least the kind that give it with fingers crossed behind their back.
But then does this leave us out in the open for more splendid things to come our way that do not fit in at the time? Are we setting ourselves up for disappointment, or maybe even (insert doom music) burnout?
There are days (heck, sometimes months) when I find that the more I experience, the more I make changes, the more I see the more confused I am. It is like I have seen the matrix and I know too much. It leaves me to wonder: is ignorance actually bliss?
George Harrison sings in his song "The Inner Light" that "the farther one travels, the less one knows" and that "Without going out of your door, you can know all things on earth. Without looking out of your window, you can know the ways of heaven."
So happiness is within basically. Great. Without getting this down, we would be hungry and thirsty forever. So yes, I got that--but! Time. Time after time, time will rule. Timing is the key to life choreography. The steps you take will matter, but if the timing is off you can get nowhere. So I have the pieces, I feel overall pretty good, but I still feel at a constant crossroads in a forest of hanging clocks and blooming opportunities in the distance.
The night I received that card I had disarmed myself: I was excited, open, and confident in what I had been creating, and where my next adventure was taking me. I was completely free. Ready to leap. 2007 had brought me an abundance of joy via the alignment of many crisscrossed paths. My explaining where I was going and what I had (have) been working on is actually what prompted Jeff to write that, in the midst of an intoxicating blur, twirled in the aftermath of my tattoo completion... and too much beer and adrenaline at Broken Art.
I remember looking at those words and thinking I had heard them before, but I hadn't, well not really anyway. My friends spoke about the challenges that shone in the subtext. But my story, or 'the' story rather, at the time was only whispering hints of my own 29 chapters, through whipped memories that had amalgamated to make my rainbow-swirled, pop life what it had been. At that point, timing in my life was a smooth, well synched, group of threads. Threads of moments cloaked by pleasure in myriad forms, stretching from West coast to East and places above, below and beyond. It all seemed right to me, and I was creating this fictitious love story that I had somehow avoided. Confusion had turned to dust far beyond my memory, and was blown a million miles away.
So here am I now, my life is still charmed, but now those words are starting to project themselves on my world in an unavoidable manner. They are humming from the ground beneath my feet, and wrapping themselves around me as each moment unfolds. All of the implementations since that September, and the sum of their parts, have carried me to today, to this state of confusion. To another beginning with me staring the light of day in the face, and realizing that yet another one here has been swallowed and left to swish back and forth in my memory. Now, I am not saying that the day before wasn't thoroughly enjoyed, because it was quite fantastic indeed, in fact I am happy despite my confusion. What I am saying is that I as I get older I find that more times than not, I awake to find I am surrounded by empty, dry glasses, in what is typically my half-full wonderland- and I am starting feel like I am about to run out of place on the time table; that if I don't take a sip now, that liquid heaven beaming at the top of the rim might evaporate and I may never see it again.
And maybe it will. Even though the world will keep turning. We will (w hope) keep waking up everyday and going about our business; making to do lists in our heads, on our iphones, and laptops. We will email, journal, scribble, analyze, imagine, connect, disconnect. Reboot. We will make pro and con lists. Compare and contrast. Fantasize and come back to reality. We will dream... daily, nightly, monthly, yearly. We will fall in and out of love and lust. But maybe the opportunities that we seize will never be as good as the ones we missed out on. Some of us will know this feeling, some of us will be lucky to push it away before it ever actually hits.
So, with all this said: Can we get it right?
No matter what I continue to take mental notes; I make sure to enjoy the moment even as I grasp hope and keep it close as I ponder on the perpetual life question: will I ever have all of the greatness coming at me at once and be able to have the room to have it all as a part of my life? Can I get it right and have it all?
Will I someday soon sit back, smile burning bright, take it all in and think "the timing couldn't be more perfect?"
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