that's mrs. mediocrity to you

in a car is all it takes to clear my mind. four hours of nothing to do but drive and drive down this endless asphalt ribbon. my hardest decision will be which music to listen to next. four hours of singing, loud, uninhibited singing, along with joni mitchell, bob dylan, cowboy junkies, counting crows, alison krauss. four hours of not caring what people passing me think as i belt out all my favorites, feet tapping, head bobbing, mouth wide.

four hours of trucks and cars and vans and jeeps and buses
and motorcycles, and one helicopter being pulled by a camper.
never saw that before. of watching for hawks and spotting two herons and counting crows as i sing a counting crows song and
then smiling to myself about that. of eating m&m’s and drinking
a coke, which I only ever do on long drives.

four hours not distracted by internet or television or telephones or anyone else’s voice. four hours of looking ahead, not behind, not up, not down, not at everything that needs to be done. four straight hours of straight hard thinking.

four hours of sky and horizon, trees and wire, whizzing by so fast you don’t see it. but it sits there, in your mind’s eye.

four hours of enjoying the ride.

four hours twice within 28.

eight hours in a car, with my thoughts and my music.

and none of those thoughts were of time.

My hair is a mess. I see myself in the reflection of my monitor and I laugh. You think I don’t, but I do, I laugh out loud because I am always forgetting what I look like, somehow I expect to see the 20-year-old me when I look in the mirror, but that girl is gone, out galavanting somewhere, she has better things to do.

It isn’t a matter of time, the years have passed, I remember them. It is a matter of mirrors. I have always wondered if you feel the same on the inside when you are eighty. I feel the same, in the core, the kernel of my being, as I always have, but I look in the mirror and someone older stands before me. I know I am in there, I know that if I strip away the mercury that lies beneath the glass, I will see all the way to my center.

I am not inert, I change each day, time moves through me, and I am not afraid. I am not chained to the notion of youth, I understand, I accept, but I do not cheer time’s passing. I don’t regret it, either. Minutes tick away on the clock whether we watch them or not. They pass us by or embrace us. We get to choose.

I can think of time as the enemy, it is easy to make time the bad guy. But time has no emotion, it cannot be cruel. It just stands there, a pillar of salt. It is just time.

It forgives but never forgets and moves forward but never returns and we stand on the sidelines and cheer or watch or turn our backs, but it keeps on playing. It is just time.

We are on time, we are out of time, we need more time, we take the time, we take a time out, time is on our side, time waits for no man, we try to put time in a bottle.

It is just time.

Time bursts all our bubbles, time stops us short,
time thinks a mirror is envy.

It is all that there is and all that there isn’t.

It is just time.

* title from Bob Dylan’s album