Time to ...

Time: we haven't much. So, not investment of, or use of, but enjoyment of, which is different for everyone. Mine has evolved over my decades. I was thinking that it has not been evolution in the sense of Darwin's natural selection of the species, adapting and adapting and adapting toward best accommodating to and surviving in the environment, but on further thought that's exactly what it is. Whatever I can do best as I pass through the ages and stages of human life has been and is what I enjoy doing with my Time. When I was seventeen and forty, it didn't especially occur to me that I was using my Time in enjoyment of it, but that was in fact what I was doing; and now I'm weekly confronted with the acclamation "My friends, life is short, and we haven't much Time" it actually does especially occur.

So, what then? Living right on StAndrews Bay is, for me, the best that Time can do for me. Living here with Linda, constantly mindful that one day one of us will be here alone, remembering where the Time went. Reading whatever I want to read, this morning a Science Foundation article about the Black Hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, and another black hole fifty-seven-million lightyears distant from us. Another couple of articles about a couple who cashed out in their early fifties and are spending the rest of their lives at sea, moving from one cruise ship to another; I used to contemplate that as a really first class fun Time of life, easily more affordable than life ashore with all its costs, until life's age comes where medical specialties are required in order to continue in Time, some of them emergencies. I pray their health holds them up right on and on.

But my Time. The internet is handy, Time having fun online, including trivia, nonsense, going places via National Geographic; wondering why I agonize over America let the next generation deal with, every empire collapses in Time anyway; stopping to find and watch a Poirot film and wondering why the guilty party is always so stupid as to attend Poirot's gathering at the end of the mystery to expose the murderer; I would have been on my way to Argentina. Over against the white supremacist notion of an aryan master race, reading geneticist articles, including this morning, that Europeans are not some pure race but a melting pot of heritage, Africa and Russia. Going to my "games" file and opening checkers or solitaire, Spider solitaire with one, two, or four suites; Klondike solitaire with Easthaven, Klondike by Threes, regular one-deck, two-deck. Sudoku sometimes. Watching Linda's condo gardening, our years at The Old Place she lovingly cultivated a small plot between the houses that was christened "Patty's Garden", but gardening in a southern-exposure condo inside, and outside on the porch, is different.

What else for enjoyment of Time? Vocational: bible stuff, exploring, prepping for Sunday school. Lectionary, thinking, comntemplating, prepping for whatever upcoming Sunday I'm next scheduled for the pulpit; a process that has evolved drastically over its forty years, and less satisfyingly in recent Time, I need to revert to more reliance on others whose imaginations were helpful to me over the years instead of these lone wolf ventures off the path into the briar patch.

But Time. Sometimes fun Time online exploring old automobile brochures in The Old Car Manual Project, which adds new brochures from contributors every month, and goes back to the beginning of the 20th century, and the Classic Car Catalogue, which covers globally from 1930 through 1979.

Time: memories, remembering, peering into crevices of the mind and remembering, putting back together, adding up. Some regrets, places I don't like to go but that were just as much Frost's roads diverging that put me where I am this morning as all the happy Christmas mornings and all those late May afternoons walking home from Cove School and Bay High into the first day of Summer Vacation.

So I guess this blogpost is an rehearsal of how I enjoy Time, that is all we really have.

Oh, naps. Smelling lamb shanks stewing. A tray with a dozen cold and salty oysters being set down in front of me. Standing at my usual chair during church and looking past the Altar into Time and remembering When. Fun Time: opening a box with a newly arrived package of coffee grounds and the aroma bursts out first along with lifetime memories of Who gave me this Xmas gift!

Watching the shoreline from 7H: yesterday a very large shark swimming in close and circling around chasing dinner.

USCG working with the burned out shrimp boat

Time well spent, and we haven't much.

RSF&PTL