Wasting Time Is Vacation

By Virginia Beck.

Kalalau Beach, part of Na Pali Coast State Park.

The Ways I love to spend my time, instead of writing.

Each morning, I climb out of sleep and up the stairs to the one great room that holds our life.

A wide open, huge room in which we spend our days. Vaulted wood ceilings and a complete wall of windows, facing the sea.

I know it’s the ocean, but when we were first introduced, it was called the sea. Cold and beautiful, it surrounded England. It will always be the sea to me. It seems more intimate, calling it by its first name, since we love and know each other well.

The horizon orients me each day — showing me my relationship to this whole rolling planet and our whirling passage through the skies and stars.

It always calls me to go beyond the narrow confines of a single human body, a point of view. I embrace the largeness, the immensity. It is always asking me something. Some question I can barely hear.

Only my silent regard, the steady witnessing of how the clouds migrate westward, a high multi-hued canopy this morning. The leaves rustle. Birds sail past, busy with affairs too lofty and fast for me.

It all happens, unfolds without me lifting a finger. No responsibilities, except to observe and let this great unfolding also unfold in me.

I steep myself in peace, in freedom. Three clocks are stopped. There is no urge to wind them up.

I don’t believe in time. It is an unnecessary fiction that drives people mad. It isn’t needed in the Big Eternal, so why should I disturb myself now?

“When the waiting is in fullness” (Robert Heinlein) is one of my favorite notions. I let time fill itself.

Then it fills me.

How can I rush off when a patch of light is emerging from the skydark ocean? The scrim of cloud cover slides apart to drop silvery gleams in an expanding net of light over the spreading expanse of indigo vastness. It keeps travelling, ever widening to the horizon.

Mesmerized by the world, I am content to just be. Nature enfolds me in its perfection. What action or word could add anything but distraction from the all important Creation; Nature creating itself?

I never miss the chattering idiot in my ranting pre-historic monkey mind. Ever alert for the saboteur, the predator. Always has the exit plan, the escape and survival strategy. Smart ass remarks, pedantic advice that no one wants. God, I never miss her.

What additional words are needed in the Noise of words flooding the Internet? That electronic gibberish of maniacs talking faster and louder, faster and faster, drowning out the song of the world.

What words can I add that will honor the perfection before me? I worship here.

The world does not need another word. I once thought I could save the world with words.

But over 70, I only have the songs in my soul, and the words that may save it. Aloha!

• Virginia Beck, NP and Certified Trager® Practitioner, offers Wellness Consultation, Trager Psychophysical Integration and teaches Malama Birth Training classes. She can be reached at 635-5618.