waiting

Nov 05 2002

This week was already shaping up to the much longer than I anticipated, and then the rain showed up. The rain comes in on big tiger feet and sloshes around outside of my open window keeping me awake. I roll over and face the opposite wall but under my eyelids burn the open eyes of the alarm clock watching me and anticipating seven o'clock. I count off the days remaining in the week: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and I wonder during which of those days will it seem almost over. This is the type of waiting that reminds me of Christmas when I was younger. Not necessarily the days leading up to Christmas, but the night before when I couldn't sleep for wishing that morning would arrive. Then I would try to think of nothing at all, which inevitably lead to consideration of positive representations of nothingness. “Nothing is something, but something is not nothing,” I remember trying to explain to someone later. Waiting makes me restless and tired; my eyes get heavy and my whole body feels nervous. I certainly don't envy the Catholics who have a whole mountain for waiting. I can only hope, for their sake, that the duration of their stay is not clearly defined so that there is no temptation to constantly measure progress. And the greater the reward, the harder it is to divert your eyes. For all the trials that waiting brings, though, it is always balanced by reward. And so long as it remains in balance, waiting is a gift of the “old dualism” and I will gladly wait.