clock winder

clock winder is on repeat tonight–a beautifully wrought piece embracing the uneven nature of time: the staggered rhythms, the dissonant chords. the poignancy. the beauty. the uneven descent into silence.


this song is on repeat tonight as i stay up long past my bedtime, to pass the time, kill it, and now, finally, to mark it.

time.

yep, time.

what's to be said about this thing we understand so little about? we think we've caught it all, scooped it up and held on to it possesively, assigned a set of sequential numbers to it, occasionally a second and a minute hand, and viola, it's ours. we think we know it, that we get to control it, and we are comfortable in that illusion we blindly clutch to our chests as we carry on through time. yet all the little symbols we bring along with us, trapped inside cell phones and adorning our wrists, they are just that: a symbol. nothing more. and yet, nothing less.



i am so ready to be in my 30s. so ready to feel the passage of time mark itself on my age. because this is not just another hash mark in a row, this is the start of a new row. and while age doesn't mean everything, i feel like i've earned my stripes this past year pulling myself hand over hand, dragging myself through the mud a lot, just to cross this line.

......................................................................thirty......................................................................

i feel clean at the moment.
baptized from so many tears fighting even more fears.
but they, too, are the markers of progress. milestones of terrors i can now turn my back on as i continue forward boldly into the fog of uncertainty and confusion and growth.

and that is something else i have learned {and by learned i mean my body is feeling the truth of what my mind has known for years}: this thing i've been fighting to get to the other side of, it never ends. the other side doesn't exist. the imbalance of change, of growth, of being challenged: it never, ever gets comfortable. yes, i have my days like everyone else, where i can navigate my limitations gracefully, where i can articulate my frustrations clearly and with kindness to myself and others, but similarly there will also be the days when it all breaks apart and things spiral out of control into a temporary and usually overwhelming chaos.

but now i know.
i know.
i know.
this is just part of the process. part of time passing through me, unerringly delivering a new part of myself to understand, breaking open a new space i never knew was there.

so with that, here is a toast to another year, another decade, and to the realization that i never will arrive anywhere but here and now, the only place time has no effect on.