PSYCHOSCAPES: A Meditation on Time

My son looking across Jenness Pond toward Catamount Mountain almost 40 years ago

One thing for sure about my life: Time has not been measured by the regular ticking of a clock. When I was little, I played in the woods next to our home, which we named the “Green Forest” after a series of books by Thornton Burgess. I enjoyed building forts, damming up the little seasonal stream, and just hanging out.

I took solace in following the rhythms of the seasons and my biological clock. Eva Hoffman, in her insightful book on time, tells us that biological clocks are remarkably similar across the spectrum from humans to the most primitive bacteria,”suggesting that they have evolved from a single source… rather than…through evolution.”^⁠1 To me that single source we all share speaks of the divine.

By the time I became a teenager, time had shrunk, trapping me in the web of the patriarchal ‘50s, watching “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best.” I’d sit by Jenness Pond, gazing at Catamount Mountain on the other side, imagining that the real world was out there, waiting for me to join it.

Time changed again in Vietnam, fluctuating between extremes: When danger beckoned, my whole life flew by in a second. But mostly, time slowed to a turtle’s crawl as we languished in the Mekong Delta for what seemed like an eternity in sweltering 120-degree heat.

Going back to college after Vietnam, time again became my friend. On top of the communal energy and good vibes, awaiting the Age of Aquarius, I had the opportunity to explore big ideas, something I enjoyed almost as much as sex. Conversations and debates across campus and in the pubs were endless, as if time had stopped. As a returning Vietnam vet, I can completely identify with this passage from Hoffman’s book:

“All we had left was talking. Our conversations, sometimes delightful, were a never-ending chatter over full ashtrays and cheap bottles of alcohol, night-long discussions, and hung-over mornings. Time was frozen for us. We weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere. Neither did we have anywhere to go.”^⁠2

After college, time changed from sweet afterglow to strict taskmaster: that’s when I began eking out a living as a stonemason while raising a family, all within the pressure cooker of rampant social change.

Everything speeded up, the manic final stage of the Industrial Revolution, according to political scientist Hatmut Rosa. As he predicted, the outcome is a dead-end street: the more we cram, the less those experiences can register in our minds and memories, leading to a profound sense of alienation.^⁠3

All these factors, plus my emotional immaturity, frayed our marriage, leading to divorce. My saving grace was my son who kept me open to life’s endless possibilities, in a way that can only be seen through the eye of a child. I knew it was time to move on. I enrolled at Antioch Graduate School on route to becoming a psychotherapist. Needless to say, my sense of time changed again.

I started to meditate, read Thich Nhat Hanh, and developed ways to get off the rat race. I enjoyed a rewarding career, learning much from my patients. Retiring last year, I’ve come back to the beginning.

Life is again cyclical, governed by the physical changing of the seasons: witnessing the ice go out of Jenness Pond on April Fool's day this year, hearing the cackling of the loons returning, and applauding the tenacity of my first peas busting through the cold, hard ground.

These earthly cycles determine my daily rituals. Like being a child again in the Green Forest, I am in no hurry: I enjoy taking my time in the morning, drinking my coffee, reading the NYT, and jotting down whatever strikes me about my life and the world before it flies out of my head, perhaps never to return.

But I don't feel isolated. Yesterday, attempting to trap a marauding possum in a Havahart Trap, I caught a sultry young skunk instead. She looked at me in a bemused manner when I entered the barn, as if asking for an explanation. I talked to her softly, telling her it had all been a terrible mistake. She waited patiently as I opened the door and then sashayed away without a backward glance.

My skunk understood the facts of life that I’m still trying to master!

Laura Sewall makes the secret sauce explicit in her book, “Sight and Sensibility: our reality is textured by time, scented by the season, and responsive to incoming influences in every moment.”^⁠^⁠4

xxx

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