Waiting

There are times when we do whatever just to get through the day. We're waiting for something to change externally, some new opportunity to appear, perhaps, or a shift in the many patterns which play out in our lives. We know we're not moving toward anything important in any dramatic way, but at the same time we're doing useful things so we don't feel the time is wasted. We're waiting. And I imagine we do it a lot.

This week--actually this month-- has been like that, at least most of it. No major epiphanies of thought, no breakthroughs of understanding or accomplishment. But I've kept myself busy during each day by doing something I knew needed to get done: tending to the lawn, trimming the back ficus bushes so they don't get out of control again like they did when we had Wilma roar through and topple and uproot several, costing me a couple of thousand dollars to remove.

Today I tuned my ten dollar piano. I call it that because that's all the lady I got it from wanted, just to get it out of her hurricane-drenched second floor apartment with mold all over the walls. She had tried to protect the Kimball spinet with a tarp, but it still got soaked pretty well. I reglued several felts and tuned it several times, and eventually it dried out enough that we can play it normally. But every piano needs to be tuned, especially with the changing seasons and humidity levels here in south Florida. We have a 5-watt damp-chaser plugged in that keeps the soundboard air ambience reasonably dry, but it still gets out of tune over several months. Anyway, it was worth doing, and went well.

But it was something I did while I waited, and I knew it as I did it, just like I knew mowing and trimming the property, fixing the various things that needed fixing, and busying myself with self-assigned tasks each day that I was basically waiting. What I don't know is what I am waiting for.

I assumed I was waiting for was my fall semester to start so I could get into my class routine. Barb went back to her media center each day this week, and her students return next Monday. I have the NFL preseason games to look forward to now nearly five of seven days per week, and enjoy those, but I don't watch as many as I thought I would. The college games will explode all over Saturday within a week and we'll be swamped with that scene, always a kick for me. But those things aren't what I'm waiting for. At least I don't think they are.

Am I waiting for Godot? Waiting for the A Train? Waiting for the hurricanes to come at us from Cape Verde like a big hooking bowling ball across the Atlantic and wonder if each will hit us, in the head pin position, sticking out six hundred miles toward doomsday into the ocean? Hurricane Dean was born today, three-fourths of the way to us, but it looks like he will bowl by as a gutter ball to our south and smack the Yucatan. I'm pretty sure he's not the last, just the first this season. Dr. William Gray has been so wrong so often in his predictions of hurricanes during the past several years that I have little credence in them, and no one else's predictions either. No, I'm not waiting for the weather drama. It will happen or not soon enough.

Maybe I'm waiting for that "great idea," like Hjalmer Ekdol in Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" who would undertake no tasks or necessities which might distract him from the Great Idea if it came. I think most writers suffer from that delusion, that they always need more space or time or fewer things to do so thay can get inspired better. But no, I'm not waiting for inspiration. I've found that comes best when I'm busy as hell at something else anyway. It never comes from invitation or meditation.

Truth is, I don't know what I'm waiting for. That's the problem I have when things are basically going so well that I don't have much I need to do. Normally, we feel like we're running behind the curve, that there just aren't enough hours in the day to get done those things we need to attend to. But what about those rare times when it feels like the reverse is true? That we're actually ahead of the game?

Then we wait. Wait for the universe to catch up with us. Wait for our dreams and goals to clarify. Wait till the stores open (since when did everyone start opening at 10:30 or 11:00 am?). Wait for the eggs to fry. Wait for the mailman to bring the junk and bills. Wait for the wagon. Wait for morning. Wait for night. Wait for rain. Wait for the sun. We're ahead of them all sometimes, and we must wait.

I don't know which is harder, to wait or to try to catch up. But I suspect waiting is harder, because it's the negative, the non-action, the grinding halt. Our dreams outrace our means. It's why we can't get to sleep at night. If we're behind, at least we can act to try to catch up, and that's positive, purposeful, rewarding even if we don't quite finish all we tried to or even if our labor makes us tired. Rest comes sweet to the weary--not so to the waiters. Yes, I think waiting is the hardest part.