time

My mother used to say "the older you get, the faster time goes."  I didn't understand.  I do now.  I dislike time.  I don't wear a watch.  I don't like having my days scheduled in increments of half hours and hours, weeks and months ahead.  I prefer to wake when my body tells me to, go to sleep when it's tired, to work my day around the phases of natural light.  

Time has become a much more pressing concern for me in the last two months.  Having my mother die at 79 (same age as my dad) and turning 50 a few weeks later, I am reminded once again of the fragility of time.  That all I have is NOW, this moment.

My mother gave me this clock when my father died 8 years ago.  It doesn't work.  Occasionally, it begins to tick on its own, but for a few short minutes, and then it stops.  I love the clock.  I particularly like how it works.  Time has stopped, a moment has been frozen.   It's one of the many reasons I love photography.  For a single moment,  I can illude myself that time has slowed down or stopped, oblivious to the ever-ticking pulse of the world around me. And then..... I am reminded, as the clock does on occasion, that time is still ticking...... faster than I would like for it to.

Time waits for no one.  And for that reason, I decided it was time to make my creative dreams a reality, to start taking small steps each day to live my life whole-heartedly, unabashedly, with intention, and without regrets.  So for now, I will stop, inhale the world around me, and continue to stop time long enough to capture those many moments behind my lens.  They are moments that will never be repeated again.