The sky and water converge, become one: a view of Lake Ontario from the pier at Charlotte last week. Was it only a week ago?
I’ve recently returned from a trip upstate to visit family for a week. Though I worked remotely for two of those days, and though a week is not a long span of days, I managed to let myself forget. The week upstate was bookended by a few days off here in the city with my younger brother, with whom I drove back to Brooklyn.
Typically when I return home from anywhere, I am quick to unpack, and tend to pick up where I left off— with my habits, with the structure of my days. Not so this time, and it has felt almost like another whole week in terms of feeling relaxed and restored. Have you had this experience? It was by allowing things to fall away; to forget my habits and lists and “shoulds,” and allow myself to be in the “thousand-eyed present.”
It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
I had moments of fretting about putting things off, and moments of criticizing myself for having not cracked my sketchbook or ink even once while I was away (or since I’ve returned!)— but a change is as good as a rest, they say, so combining change with a rest is even better.
In forgetting even some routines and deliberately allowing things fall to the wayside for a bit, each day does feel new. By letting each day take on its own shape, time seemed to slow down. I’m grateful for that. I’ll try to hold on to it when I jump back into the routines of work and life later this week.
That’s it for now— Let me know in the comments if you’ve come across other ways that seem to slow down time.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
x Liz