Time in a Bottle of Twilight

It is raining outside. The humidity is palpable like fingers pressing on your pulse, but your whole body is under its pressure. As I was driving home I was looking at the band of uniform grey cloud with its scalloped edges as if some great hand had ripped it to allow the paler grey of sky to show through before it surrendered to indigo and evening and I thought about how valuable very second of time is. It also made me think how grateful I am to be going home to a calm house and no take home work from school as my holidays are not quite at an end.

I have always found twilight to be a magical time for want of a better word. There is something about the quality of light where blue, purple and grey are diluted still by the sun's oblique rays that along with hushed wind and the chorus of cicadas that is mesmerizing. It is as if for a few minutes time is stilled or slowed and anything might happen. Perhaps it is an illusion that each second is so full that it lasts for a minute of seconds. Perhaps like a straw in water light is bending time.

Twilight's magic holds in all seasons. Even the snow-wrapped winter takes on new hope in the rays of twilight.

If we had twilight all day or all night would we come to long for the sun's bright medallion or the bright greyness of a sky pregnant with rain? We always seem to want exactly what we don't have or what we rarely have. When we are young we often wish to be older so that we can have more freedom, more adventures. When we are in exams in university or college we want to be done. When we get a job we want to be successful and make more money and/or earn more praise. Vacations are greeted with euphoria and a return to work with reluctance. When we expect a baby we cannot wait for the birth. When they are born we long for a night's sleep. We cannot wait for the first smile, the first step and the first word. Then we cannot wait for the end of diapers. After working for years we look forward to retiring unless we have been blessed with work that fills us up more than it depletes us. And so it goes until we no longer want to get older or for anyone else to grow up, but we long to slow time down as time seems to have sped up. We look backward more and more with longing for those we have lost and for the shine on life's coin that has dimmed for many. However, in moments of twilight all is balanced ;hope entwines with nostalgia and memories and there are no limits in dreaming. Time stretches out even in its brevity. That is its real magic. 

Summer heat, dreams and visits

"And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And too often is his gold complexion dimm'd:" so wrote Shakespeare in Sonnet 18. 

I love the contradiction in emotion in the first two lines. Summer seems to vanish far too quickly, but on many hot days we long for the cooler more comfortable weather of early autumn. One could say we are never happy. One could also say we are ever in pursuit of balance which vanishes mirage-like as soon as we approach it from either end. Life is not placid. Perhaps it is for some, but for me there are always waves: some gentle like a cradle, some active like small quakes and some huge walls of waves threatening to capsize me and mine. My weather forecasting does not always work. I've been swept away by rogue waves and even a few tsunami waves on occasion. 

Back to balance or rather the pursuit of balance. It doesn't have the ring of "the pursuit of happiness" but I rather think it is more accurate. We want excitement, adventure, new experiences and yet we sometimes want some peace, some quiet, some anchor to keep us steady. Maybe some people are go go go all of the time, but many of us seek balance on the whole. The moon waxes and wanes, the seasons come and go, people are born and people die. To everything there is a season and on a macro level so it is with our lives. We are often too heavy on one side. In our busy world it is often on the side of  work. We are so many of us like Thursday's child working hard for a living. Then at home there is more work to do unless we are privileged enough to afford a cleaner and able to eat out when we wish. The hours drain away from our days leaving us wanting, craving something more- some luxury of time.

Balancing between now and tomorrow
We must be careful not to lose our focus
And fall into the net of the past
If we are to soar hawk-like in the great sky.