Time has frequently been an obsession of mine. Sitting on the porch, taking a little vacation from the constant coverage around the latest tragic event in our ongoing destabilization, I thought about Historical Time - what I think of when I think of total immersion in a historical period whether through reading or television, a time that was so remarkable it came to represent a whole block of time: The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, Humanism, The Black Plague, Napoleonic Wars, The Famine, and so on. Lately I have been spending some short periods revisiting the Spanish Flu epidemic of Philadelphia.
And even more recently, I am spending two month in solitude during the Pandemic of 2020.
The comfort of history is that no matter how bad it got, you know how it ended and you, personally, are still here, so your forebears must have made it through and so, maybe you will too.
Then, I think of time in another way, looking at the holly trees and the maples in my yard and listening to the birds, and enjoying this present moment.
When I went back into the house, the cats great restorers of the present, came to sit with me and on me and remind me of the NOW as it exists between my finger tips and the cats' fur as I pat them.
Time got so stretchy in the three months of my confinement, and I couldn't help but think of Marcel Proust a LOT, because of the way confinement makes you travel in your mind, and go back and forth through time, as a normal busy life does not because you are constantly interacting in the present, and can't leave it.
This is the second time I have personally lived through extreme times, the kind that make history. I became a young adult during Vietnam and it shaped my life. I married my high school sweetheart when he got drafted and we both went to Germany, he as a soldier and I as a wife. Then the anti-war protests, the Civil Rights Riots in the streets, the Women's movement and the pro-choice marches. The pot and the cigarettes.
Those times are back and with me, the 1970's all over again. But I made it through then, and luck willing, I will make it through this period, until I face my own end of time, hopefully a decade or two from now.
Happy trails to you (through space or time)
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
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