At first, I thought this place was an escape. The creak of boats gently rocking against the shingled shore, the barren gleam of stony islets in the distance, the lingering summer sun reluctant to bid farewell — they offered me breathing room. Suddenly, I noticed myself inhaling and exhaling again. In daily perambulations along the rugged wharf, in watching the weather change across the maritime landscape, in observing the ebb and flow of my neighbors, I began to give myself over to concentrating on the banal. No disasters here. No jarring newscasts. No burning world to interrupt my sanity. Time and attention belong to me once more, no longer needing to be hoarded, and earned. They are not for sale in this sanctuary.
I decide I’m not searching for inspiration. I’m not settling for a rest cure. I’m not recharging my inner psyche so that I can parcel my energy towards productivity. That insidious word I’ve been taught to worship, in opposition to laziness and uselessness. Instead, I’m disrupting the usual veil of familiarity I cloak over my senses. I’m focusing my awareness on the habitat around me: lime-hued ferns dancing in the breeze, decadent rock candy clusters erupting from crevices, spicy lichen painting every boulder step. Beings mysterious to me. Here we are entangled in the same web.
I don’t want to classify or interpret. I pause, I perceive. This place doesn’t exist for my benefit. I practice listening to the leaves respirate. I practice encountering every creature as a body indivisible, immeasurably rich. Time is money. Yet, each moment I move from noticing one particularity of my surroundings to another, I’m breaking myself of this falsehood. I create deep time by immersing into a different sort of routine. I watch the same scene through my window. I walk the same route. I sit in front of the same mottled coast. The dopamine of newness slowly wears away as I daydream, as I follow serpentine paths with no destination. I feed my memory bank. I expand my imagination.
I discover I cannot renounce the world. Can a tree uproot when the soil contaminates? Can a creek live as a recluse when dammed? I am not an isolated simulation, an output, an amenity. I seep, and decompose, and react, and flower in relation to all others.
I return to the density of pressures. Amid the dissonances of the street where I reside, I embrace boredom without surrendering to stupor. I refuse blind reaction. I pay attention to the rhythm of my breathing interlaced with the breath-work around me. I exercise prayerful seeing. And with this beholding I open up pockets of respite for others indeterminate to me, in obscure threads. I allow them to reciprocate my attention, to invite me into their embodiments.
Meanwhile, the squawking gulls remind of another place and another time when I strolled beside another ocean. I’ve carried wisps of that interval with me: the feel of the sun-baked crags, the purpled evenings, the gathering clouds. The memories shift, warp, flow, but will always keep as part of my being.
Bespoke Traveler Note:
Poet Roger Reeves examines time, community, and alternative existences in his collection of essays, “Dark Days.” Find at your local bookstore or public library.
Thank you for listening. “Reclaiming Time” was written and narrated by Atreyee Gupta. For more details, head to the website at www.bespoketraveler.com.
