Sabbatical

Two months in Santa Fe. Time does a strange thing when you get towards the end of something. This is our next to last day here and time has been flying for the last two weeks. At the beginning of the stay it seemed like the time stretched out in front of us like a big beautiful blank slate. We planned to get to all the galleries and all the day trips and a couple of overnight trips and there were no apparent limitations that would prevent us in this big expanse of time, from doing everything. Of course we didn't. Some days it snowed. Some days I was tired. Some days there was tennis or lunch with someone. All part of the goodness of this trip. But it is the matter of making choices. You know? Choose one thing and by necessity that eliminates another thing.
It is the youth of a vacation. The youth of a sabbatical. All is possible.

Then as each day is spent with one thing or another, the number of days diminishes and there are fewer days in which to choose different possibilities. And we find ourselves saying, "Where did these two months go?" Today is Friday. It is late Friday afternoon, actually. Tomorrow we pack and Sunday we begin our drive back through Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas and Tennessee to Franklin.

It is like our lives. Here we are at 64. We say things like, I remember when I first heard the Beatles singing that song. That was more than 40 years ago. Where did all these years go? We are shocked at the speed of time now. John and I have been blissfully together for four and a half years and we find it shocking that it has been so long even though we also feel as if we have always been together. There is a very natural relaxed kindness and humor between us. We genuinely LIKE one another and are madly in love as well.

So given that, I should think we will just appreciate each day that we have, as fast as it is, and stay in the present!!!!!

This is the artwork we chose on this trip and is a serigraph by Robert Daughters called "Three Poplars". He is now 79 years old and has painted in the southwest for a very long time. There is something about time in this piece that John and I both relate to. The virtual timelessness of the mountain and the little flash of time we people spend on this earth. What labor and dreams went into building this home! And yet in scale and in longevity, it is nothing compared to the mountain. It makes a case for being present! Dig what you have. It will go by in a flash and disappear. Is it even a wink in mountain time? And is a mountain even a wink, in God's time?