More writing with Eanlai

A Clock and A Time When Time Was Important

When I was in college, there was a clock in every classroom, so I stopped wearing a watch for a while. It took some getting used to, since I kept looking by habit at my left wrist and seeing only a band of lighter skin, but I managed to get to my classes on time somehow.

Then, however, I decided to try wearing contact lenses. Suddenly my appearance was more important than the familiar security of my specs. I can't quite remember what prompted this decision. Maybe I had recently become lovers with my roommate, and the glasses were awkward. However, I needed to be very accurate about how long I wore the lenses while I was still trying to break them in, and back came the watch. Just my luck, my eyeballs are too delicate for contact lenses, hard or soft, so I gave up on them, but kept wearing the watch.

Nowadays, younger folks use their smart phones to tell time, and the only ones who still wear wristwatches are old fossils like myself. I must confess, though, I carry an ipod touch in my breast pocket, mostly for reading and sudoku, and I do occasionally resort to pulling it out to confirm what date or day of the week it is, and, if it's in my hands already, I will sometimes press the button that brings up the time in digital format, instead of turning my wrist to read the time on the face of my analog watch.

I also use the itouch as a timer when I'm sitting with kittens in the medical wing of the SPCA, and my watch is covered by a plastic gown and latex gloves. The alarm tone on the timer lets me know when my visit is complete, if I remembered to start the timer before starting the visit.

Nature and Self-Worth

Are you a religious person? Does the spirit move you to pray when you meet the beauties of nature, in forest groves, or when being misted by a waterfall? God creates such wonderful beauty, and some creatures reveal her sense of humor, and yet we so seldom think of ourselves as beautiful parts of God's creation.

On the other hand, something rubs me the wrong way about some people who seem too pleased with themselves, too comfortable in their skin, too perfect. I get angry with them - want to point out the mistakes they will make, that they'll grow old and die, like the rest of us. I get defensive when I compare my insides with their outsides.

I want to really believe that I'm doing the best I can with what I've got to work with. But there's a critical slave-driver sitting on the committee in my head, who always thinks I could be doing more, doing better, in justifying my place on earth. But waterfalls don't have to pass tests, forests don't have to meet quotas. They simply
are, valuable and beautiful as they were created.

What I really want to say is to wonder what would happen if I really accepted myself as I am, if I didn't compare myself with Mother Teresa or Bill Gates, but simply lived out being Dana. Would I stop contributing anything to the world and lose all self-respect? Would I become the self-satisfied, smug sort of person who grates on my nerves?

The Natives are Restless

There was a wildlife convention this morning in my backyard. I saw this mid-sized, mid-brown bird pecking at the recently cleared dirt next to the stepping stones. I grabbed the binoculars that live near my back windows, and tried to focus my weak eyes on it as well as I could. It pecked at the earth, and also seemed to be digging in it, with both feet at a time, in a hopping move. I really wondered what it was doing -- digging for food, digging a nest, performing a display of territory or courtship? Whatever it was doing came to a halt, and it disappeared.

A few moments later, I saw more motion, on the side fence. It was a squirrel, standing atop the fence and batting at the neighbor's tree with its paws. Also quite mysterious.

Finally, I saw a pair of smaller birds, back on the ground, pecking at the pink knotweed that the gardeners had cleared of weeds. Were they finding insects on the blossoms or sipping nectar and pollinating them? Heck if I know, but this morning I saw more animals not our cats than I've seen in the entire previous year.