GONE FISHIN

Time is relative. Isn’t everything? It’s all a matter of perspective and perception. In reality (whatever "reality" is) time goes faster or slower depending on velocity and gravity. Hello, Einstein, or is it Newton? Not that I understand the theory of relativity or Newton’s concept of absolute time, but I do think we experience time as going by slowly when we are enduring, and faster when we are enjoying. Don't we all believe our time on this earth is brief (if not also nasty and brutish, as philosopher Thomas Hobbes suggests)? I like the definition of time attributed to Mark Twain (or was it John Lennon?). "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.” Even better is  this one from Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854).

                                    “Time is a but a stream I go a-fishing in.”

Hello, Henry David Thoreau, American transcendentalist writer. whose thoughts are far easier to grasp than are Newton’s (or John Lennon’s). Seems he is saying that time "just is," and we can leisurely cast into and out its eternal waters,  pulling out what we will, without an awareness of time itself. He also said we live lives of "quiet desperation," living by the world's urgencies, distractions and pre-occupations. Even back then, it seemed to him that everyone was in a hurry, stressed, anxious, and often neglectful of the more important demands and pleasures of our minds, hearts and souls, of each other, and of the gifts of nature.

         What would he think if he saw how things have accelerated since in all directions, with dependence/interdependence on ever-changing technology, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, which make his observations about time and our desperation is even more relevant, except now, there is no "quiet" desperation. It's loud and clear. The pace of life has escalated exponentially: our imagined urgencies; dependence on and addiction to “devices"; wasting, or killing “time” on social media, email, video games, in front of the TV; clicking on apps for everything imaginable—don’t get me started!      

        Yep! We have definitely been cast out of The Garden, having taken a huge bite of an Apple of another kind.

Thoreau saw where we were headed at the speed of light. And yet, how could he (or we)  have imagined that we would be headed back to the future, going chronologically forward in time, but stuck in unaddressed grievances and issues: from the Civil War (maybe even the Crusades), ongoing racial, gender and human rights issues, wars, misinformation and conspiracy theories, the uncertain fate of immigrants and refugees, to name a few? Don’t get me started!

One thing is certain: while we live in the present, our thoughts are more focused on the past or future, often fraught with regrets, anxiety, worries or fears. Remaining in the moment is difficult, which becomes painfully obvious when we attempt to meditate or clear our minds of brain chatter, or even just take a moment to breathe. Being in the present seems more possible when we are in love (with a person or a project). Then no one or nothing exists but our beloved. Being with children can also keep us in the moment, partly because we have to attend to their ever-present needs and activities. Children compel us (if we are attentive and follow their lead) to live and love each moment, mostly in play and imagination where time stands still. To quote another voice: “For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.” (C. S. Lewis)

Of course, we often live by the calendar and clock for our day, week, month and year: off getting children off to school; getting ourselves off to work or the day’s obligations and responsibilities; catching a flight; preparing a report; paying the bills; looking ahead to a birthday, a holiday, a social event; checking texts; making phone calls; keeping appointments; FaceTiming and Zooming! There is no end in sight, unless we remember to stop and forget time. 

        When I feel quietly (or not so quietly) desperate, or my mind drifts to the absurdity that, here we are—on our little blue planet spinning madly through the dark, cold expanses of infinite space, then I must stop and put up my imaginary “GONE FISHN” sign, and take time to look up at the stars, the silver moon, or a tree in the meadow, feel the warmth of the sun, or the cool of a breeze, hear the sound of the sea, or the crickets' song.

www.robertlouiswilliams.com

    

My racing heart and mind calm in the quiet.

Until I splash back into the rushing stream where, actually, everything IS happening at once!

 

ENDLESS SUMMERS

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

     The night above the dingle starry,

          Time let me hail and climb

     Golden in the heydays of his eyes 

The summer of 2023 has flown by in a flash . . . going. . . going, almost gone, now at the end of August (die she must). Once there were endless summers.

    I do not have any vivid memories of summers after having moved from the city when I was 10 years old, not like the ones I have of the summers of the 1950s. There was no anticipation of endings, just living in the summer "daze." And so my mind drifts back at this time of year, like remembering a beloved book I was sad to see come to an end. 

    All was contentment in the familiar, and delight in the wonder of being a child. In short, it was the opposite of Thomas Hobbes’ assessment of life without “awe.” Childhood is a time of awe, not time for assessment; ideally it is a time for living without care, unaware of the chaos and evils of the world, of suffering humanity, and fearful of danger or death. Life then was rife with simple pleasures and discovery waiting just below the surface of everything. Like Thoreau, I go a-fishing in the stream of that time and pull out the stuff of what are now treasured memories.

    Life was lived outdoors from morning until night, no TV during the day, if at all, or any other screens to distract from the work of childhood, which is play, and just "being," lying in the cool grass gazing at the wispy clouds passing around the world, or at the sparkle of stars. 

    Ours was the only single, detached house on the block with a green fence in the front of our house, which gave it a stately appearance compared to the stoops on the other narrow row homes There were blue hydrangea (we called them snowballs) on either side of the gate. Our backyard was a theatre in which we enacted house keeping, sailing on pirate ships, flew with Peter Pan and the Darling children. We played ball, tag, jacks, or invented new games on the spot. Our backyard was alternatively a classroom for observation of nature, with shrubs, a flower garden and a taller-than-our-house cherry tree. That tree was refuge from sun and rain, and a lesson in the seasons. There was not much greenery in the otherwise little crowded hill town outside of Philadelphia proper. It was all I knew or needed of the great outdoors. And it was lovely.

In springtime, fragrant white blossoms burst forth on our tree. We proudly brought blooming branches to the May Day procession at St. Lucy’s church on Green Lane. The petals fell like snow showers, fluttering in the air, drifting blocks away and scattering on sidewalks like confetti. 

    When my sister and I visited the old neighborhood 30 years later, we found the garden and yard were cemented over, and the tree was gone.

    Was our world really that small?  

    No! That house, that street, that tree, and the endless summers of play were a boundless and beautiful world I adored, living in my mind and heart all the years since. 

When evening came on, we would listen for the circus-like tune blasted from Rodeo Joe’s ice cream truck, with a cowboy on a bucking bronco painted on the side. Favorite treats were water ice, fudge pops or orange creamcicles.  Neighbors were out on their stoops for the evening. Mrs. Pickel would buy an ice cream cone for her dog, Midnight, and feed it to him on her front stoop. Mr. Wheeler, a former boxer, would chain smoke cigarettes and watch the world go by.

         Sometimes my father would send my sister and me to Jack's Pharmacy and Soda Fountain at the corner of Baker and Gay under the El for for ice cream for the family. Walking back the short distance up the hill, carrying a bouquet of cones covered over with wax paper, we licked our own dripping cones, arriving with sticky butter pecan, chocolate and orange sherbet fingers.

After sundown, it was all street games with neighborhood children. We clapped and cheered when the streetlights came on, the signal for the revels to begin: hide and seek, card games of go fish and rummy on the warm sidewalks, jump rope with accompanying songs to keep the rhythm:

           Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around

   Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground

    Truth or Dare was a game of choice: answer a question or carry out a dare. Once a shy boy, who was usually too sick to come out to play, chose a dare, and was lowed into a city culvert by two other boys! Learning to roller skate and to ride a bike on our steep hill was thrilling and dangerous, resulting for some of us in May though August bumps, bruises and scabbed over knees. 

    

    Where were our parents? 

    No one had a swimming pool, but on the sweltering days of summer, an adult would take a wrench and open the nearest fire hydrant. Then, a flood of gushing cool water and a riot of children splashing in the water flowing into the cobblestone street below the curb, where children sent leaves, sticks or paper boats down the stream—our very own creek in the city! 

On a occasion when the neighborhood kids did became aware of a recurring danger, we would scrambl to duck on the side of a stoop or into an alleyway to avoid being hit by the car of Nick Caruso. He was my father's cousin, who, already inebriated, would periodically make rounds to people he knew asking for a shot of whiskey. Then he would get into his car (we had already taken cover), and make his reckless way up our street, swerving onto the sidewalk from time to time. It was exciting and frightening, but also funny, and we nervously laughed at the sight. I think the older kids knew it was sad too, for him, and for us to have seen it.    

    At the glimmer of the first star in the twilight sky, it was:

    Star light, star bright,  

            first star I see tonight,

      I wish I may, I wish I might

            have the wish I wish tonight.

I don't remember what I wished for back then (when I still believed wishes came true). I suppose my wishes changed over time. In my earlier years, I may have wished for more ice cream. Then later, waiting at the green gate, I wished the boy with the Elvis hair would notice me as he walked down our street each afternoon. He never did.

We played outside well into evening until we heard our mothers' call, “Come in now. It’s getting late.” On steamy summer nights, after tub baths (never heard of showers or air conditioners), my sister and I roasted in our second floor bedroom, with just a fan at the window. We talked and giggled, about what I haven’t a clue, until my father would yell up the stairway, “Don’t make me come up there. Be quiet now, and go to sleep.” 

We eventually did settle down, without stuffed animals, without stories read to us, without being tucked in—all of which we did with our children and grandchildren years later--no worse for the lack thereof, our having experienced magical moments now lost in the mists of "once below a time."(1) And through our window we could see the moon rising, and the last few fireflies, or hear the crickets' lullaby in late August, “so thin a splinter of singing."(2) We said prayers “to the close and holy darkness,” (3) and drifted off to sleep.

                                               Time held me green and dying

                                            Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Quotes at beginning and end from Dylan Thomas's "Fern Hill

1. Dylan Thomas from "Fern Hill”

2. Carl Sandburg from “Splinter"

3. Dylan Thomas from” A Child's Christmas in Wales”