Time, Devotion and Other People’s Houses
Last weekend, I met up with my Acro Yoga partner, Ben, for a session at his place.
Acro is a funny thing.
How many situations can you think of which involve two people configuring their body parts to achieve a state of well being together? Dance, right? Sex, you probably thought of. Maybe Thai massage.
But then there’s Acro.
It’s a game of trust and intimacy, tangential to sexuality.
It’s a nice way to get an intimacy fix.
Ben’s a deep bass of creativity and reliability. Between you and me, he’s also a total nitpick — I guess that’s what the word “endearing” is for.
He lives in the basement of a house in the lower Haight. Every time I’ve come over, we’ve stayed downstairs, attempting acrobatics and falling all over one another.
Except today, because we’re hungry stoners wanting a Spanish tortilla, so we go up to the kitchen.
I imagined the kitchen would be a dinky little place, the apartment of some older couple.
We walk up the stairs and Ben opens the door. I pause in wonder.
It’s expert decorating in the foyer. The living room is so inviting, a work of art with details galore. The furniture has clearly been picked out by hand, some salvaged from a thrift shop and some brought in from the very best.
They have these wooden leaf sculptures on the walls; they give an odd lean to the space.
There are books all along the left wall, and the right wall is full of picture frames.
There’s a collection of sea shells. A collection of porcelain turtles. And a collection of records, and a collection of cacti.
When there’s one kind of object, there’s a gang of friends to accompany it. And I’ll tell you why.
Have you ever lived with someone you loved, who appreciated each gift you brought them?
You begin to accumulate stuff — and you don’t even like stuff that much, but that’s not what it is about. You walk down the street and there’s a hat with a panda on it- that’s an inside joke, so you bring it home. There’s a pinecone, and you know she loves pine cones, so home it goes. I was thinking of you. This mirror reminded me of you. I bought you a hairbrush I think you’ll like. I am devoted to you.
This house is an altar, an altar- I realize — to two people who continue to really, really love each other.
The cactuses in the windowsill. The his and hers hats along the mirror. The paper cranes. How long does it take to fold so many paper cranes?
Years and years of devotion along the mantelpiece. Photographs and art pieces, bits picked up here and there- how many years, I wonder. How many years?
I’ve been standing here forever, and Ben wants me back in the kitchen. Here I am pondering the beauty of devotion and leaving my Acro partner to cook us lunch alone.
This kitchen really gets me, though. So they like spices, and spotless countertops, and different types of wine glasses. So does everyone, it seems. They love cooking. An array of healthy cookbooks lines the kitchen walls. But in the corner, there’s something I don’t think I’ve ever seen- an index card file of recipes.
And the recipe collection hits me the most. It’s written by hand. From some ancient age in which people used pencils.
Some people get overwhelmed by emotion, some people don’t. I do. I was bathed in devotion, and it brought tears to my eyes.
How long have they lived here? How old are they? How much time do they have left? Do they feel like time is slipping through the cracks? Do the days blur together? Do they fear losing each other one day?
When I was growing up, I was told time rushes by.
Your college years, it was said, is the time of my life. It rushes past in a second. Then you get a job and and suddenly you’re old, and you have kids, and you can’t even tell your kids how you got there because it went so fast. You don’t remember anything, the days blurred into one. You just blinked and it happened- your life.
I’d call this mindset “a poverty of time”.
A poverty of time. There’s not enough; I’m counting up my change and it’s not adding up to life.
As a result, I’ve always rushed around, feeling helpless as the eternal now slips through into yesterday.
The benefits of this mindset is carpe diem, seizing each day. The side effects are a desire to seize hold of everything.
Poverty of any kind is constant anxiety. In poverty- in any state of not-enough- there cannot be peace.
How long have they lived here?
While Ben is chopping potatoes in the kitchen, there’s a rustling near the door. A balding man with white hair steps in carrying 4–5 bags of groceries in reusable bags.
“Oh hello,” he says. “You’re Ben’s friend?”
“Do you want some help carrying those in?” I ask.
I watch him in wonder — he’s a little short of breath. One day, going to get groceries will be the venture of the day.
“Oh that’s alright,” he says.
After dropping off the groceries, he walks into the living room and sits in one of the armchairs. After a few moment, I decide to follow him.
“I love your house,” I say. I hesitate. “There’s so much devotion here”. I look up, a little anxious. Maybe I stepped over a line.
He smiles.
“Thank you,” he says. “I’m Paul. Take a seat,” pointing to the other armchair.
“There certainly is,” Paul continues. “We’ve done things to this house that people would never do if they didn’t intend to stay for a long time. Like the doors to the living room- I fixed them up and sanded and varnished them by hand. Or that window, I know where they bent the oak”.
“Bent it? Oh yeah…that’s funny, I imagined it was just cut in a curve”.
“It’s hard to find a tree big enough for that. No, they steam it and bend it, one part at a time. I know because I’ve worked with large scale wood pieces…
Here,” he says, “take a look.” He pulls out an iPad and shows me a diagram of a wooden ship. “We’re building this pirate ship for kids to do an educational ride in- in Cupertino.”
“Wow,” I say.
It carries on like this. I’m impressed, but more by the tone of voice — not the content.
He sits back in his armchair and opens something up on his iPad to read, with an air of leisure. He is retired now. He builds ships for fun.
Why am I so enamored? This man speaks with the ease of someone who has enough time. They’ve lived here 38 years.
The number 38 soothes me, it’s just enough. I suspect any more or less would have scared me for no good reason.
He has enough time.
What would life be like if I had enough time?
I always think everything needs to be experienced now, because who knows what will happen four years from now. I have one month, three month, one year goals.
Does 6 years from now feel close or far away?
It makes me nervous just to think about it. But so much of how one perceives the world is malleable, maybe this too can change. There are plenty of people who believe you can create material abundance for yourself. Can you create an abundance of time?
What if I could choose to live as if 6 years was a tremendous stretch, and after it passed, I’d have plenty time then, too.
On television, in movies, in CVS birthday cards with poor taste, it seems like everyone wants to be younger. To have more time. It would be a bit of a rebellion to not beg for it, to step instead into presence and radiance. No desperation to be back in college. No terror that youth is slipping by.
True peace.
Sitting in their altar house of recipe collections, I feel like I got that.
As I talked to Paul I got the sense that he knew he had enough time. His abundance of hours is enviable.
Do you think you can learn to feel that way?
A huge thank you to Danielle Insalaco-Egan, Charlotte Medlock, Amanda Winter and Hillary Diane for editing this piece and providing feedback. Thank you for your support, your love and your care.
If you love this story, please do “recommend” it so we can chat about time with more strangers ❤
