We run life by the clock. Whether life shares that ticking is another matter.
Stillness
It is Sunday morning. I have returned from dropping my wife off at the airport. The house quiet. The land silent. Except for the squawking of parrots and calls of the goshawks. No movement of the palm fronds. The Strait is mirror blue.
Life at the speed of trees.
As the sun penetrates the clouds, the sheet metal roof clunks and twangs and pops as it expands with the heat. I can see the solar panels are absorbing the energy, topping up the batteries keeping the fridge cool and the ice cubes solid.
Life at the sound of the sun.
As church the voices of the choir sang words I know not their meaning, though their notes carried me too, to the roof. A cathedral to a belief, as stirring as the forest where the dry river does not run, except to flood, shedding the excess rain racing to the ocean in a roar.
Last night between the rain squall, the sheet lightening was on display. As a room light turning on and off again, the heavens opened and closed.
We could marvel at nature and sleep in peace.
We are lucky.
We are remote and removed from the rhetoric, posturing and disrupting ideological and technological explosions, plane rides away.
Around noon the apex raptor, a swamp harrier or manu levu in Fijian, likes to make an appearance. She drifts down from the mountain behind us riding the air. Almost motionless, circling searching for lunch. She will head out over the shore of the Strait before turning upslope. While at times just a dot in the distance its presence is known.
A goshawk half the size will challenge, though levu pays scant attention. There is plenty for both and the territory boundaries fluid. Though serious the defense seems it is a treat to watch their aerial jousting, even catching a flash of talons menacing each other.
Life at the flow of accomodation.
In the Strait, the Lady Daya ferry has begun its return trip to the main island. Silent from here but on board the diesel engines will pulse the rhythms of the crossing. The passengers going about whatever routines their voyage entails. Also in the Strait, returning from the morning outing in comes one of the resort’s dive boats bringing back for lunch happy underwater adventurers from the Rainbow Reef.
A still life tableau in motion.
When a magpie passes, the flap of its wings sounds loud. Its body disturbing the air as it seeks its mate. Once on a dead branch the soft warble calls the location. Soon joined they perch and too look out.
Despite all the nature around me sometimes, though I know better, I am compelled to plug into a news channel. I trip on the headlines and deals, deadlines and debates. A fevered feast of now-ness. News and truth have a funny dance going on. The tempo fueled with a need for speed to change on command.
When looking out to the Strait change changes, passes at its layered pace.
The rhythms of stillness are not of the jitters of commentary.
The dogs are looking to me to stop writing and walk them. We head down the hill towards the dry river. They chase each other through the long grasses and bit a one another’s legs. Play as serious as it gets. My broad brimmed hat is on securely as a forest breeze cools the hot sun. I stop again at the wind toppled ancient rain tree to see if a parrot or two has made a pause.
Not this hour.
Time is not a clock. It is a condition. Everything keeping time – just not together. Plural time. Layered velocities of life.
The dogs rush past.
Out here time stretches, folds, returns. Life moving at the speed of belonging, not the speed of demand. Nothing is lost, only moved along.
In those screens of glass and silicon that tempt me, time fractures. Everything is now. Often late. With demands. Urgency substitutes for importance.
The Strait looking flat does not.
It simply continues.
Life at the speed of ocean.
