Wait For It

I asked Nick what he was doing the other night.  It was bed time and I'd just finished saying goodnight to Zack.  Nick was staring off towards the dresser, directly at - or through - the lava lamp.

"Oh, I'm just thinking, I guess."

"What about?"

"You know what, Dad?  I'm not really sure," and here he took a pause, a "beat" as we used to say in Theater School, " ...yet."

Yet.


I've been sitting at the table here, watching the final act of this morning's sunrise, for about forty-five minutes.  I've nothing to show for it, no dishes done, no Christmas carols rehearsed, no laundry started.  Nor have I solved any world problems, figured out how to say something about the deep polarization of today's society, or decided what's for dinner tonight.

Nope, I am still just staring out the window waiting.

Waiting for what?

I'm not sure.

(Meaningful pause.)

Yet...

It is impossible to overstate the importance of waiting, of stillness, of listening to silence.

And yet, I am very hard on myself when feel like I've wasted a morning, fettered away an afternoon, whiled away a late night.  I know better, but, the power of my old nemesis Time makes me rue those hours as lost, unproductive, wasted.

It is hard for me, balancing the creative need to think and wait - to go down a road and come back, to wait in darkness for that perfect shooting star, to collect the pauses between the notes to actually hear the song, to wait for the light that follows dark that follows light - with the scurry of life, the staccato jumps from this to that, the pace, the turns, slips, the messes, mistakes and screams, the wild, the unpredictable.

So, I guess this may be a reminder to you (I'll let you determine if you are the you I'm speaking to) to go ahead and stare at the lights on the tree, listen to the heat blowing inside and the wind outside.  Go ahead and sit with a rose or a steaming cup or a faded photograph or sleeping baby on your lap.  Watch the bread or the sun or a toddler's chest rise or fall or both.  Light a candle, sing a song, shed a tear and... wait.

For how long, a voice just said - it sounded like that old man Time.

Sorry, old man, there is no way of knowing...

...yet.

From Marci's "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."

"God is pretty boss."

I believe that statement took Nick about two solid hours to come up with - staring at the lava lamp.


Hey, thanks for spending some time here, with me.  I'll keep starin' into the fire, you do the same, alright?

There's always more thing, right?  I wanted to tell you, or remind myself later, or show the boys, now, uh, or then, or... man this gets mixed up.  Anyway, I composed this whole post, start to finish, capturing and editing the images, researching, lining up the words all pretty like, copying and, subsequently, pasting stuff - all on my new smarty-pants phone.  All the while listening to the "Acoustic Concentration" station on Spotify bluetoothed to my bitchin' new Bose minispeakers from, get this, the same dammed phone.

I know that's not very impressive to many of you but, well, I'm a technophobe, and this shit is hard for me.  Also, and this is a little difficult to explain, I'm, well, holding the future in my hands.  My past's future that is.  (And Nick's and Zack's as well, it occurs to me.)  When I was young, the things these phones do was what we imagined our future would be like.

It blows my mind sometimes.

(Ironically, I am low on power and the phone might run out before I can get this done.  That's funny right there...)

Aaaaaand, the sun and shadows spells "BE" on the wall in the dining room...

Yep.  I'd have never captured this fleeting image if it hadn't been for this stupid, smart phone.


Peace and Joy to you all.  It's Advent, let's all wait.  You see, it's not Christmas...

...yet.