Time After Time

Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick and think of you

~ Cyndi Lauper

The song came on the radio. It was old, but not that old. I wonder where the singer is nowadays? She had a fun voice and catchy tunes that told gritty stories. I wish I had copper hair.

The song is still playing, but it's not on the radio now. It's in the car with me as I head somewhere far away from you. Scenes collapse in my head, or I should say they overlap. From the steering wheel and windshield I move to a more comfortable spot where it's possible to stretch out. 

Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick and think of you

Caught up in circles

Confusion is nothing new

I am confused, yes. Maybe. Maybe confused isn't the right way to describe what is going on. Maybe it's just ambiguity that muddles the mind and scatters the picture. Because I know I’m not the confused person in all of this. What’s confused is what’s out there, what is spinning, caught up in circles, that creates a kind if sense of disorientation. 

Oh, I just don’t know, I can’t figure it out. If I had to define it, which I can't, I’d say I’m a bit lost. Or feeling that I will be lost, soon. That is not a pretty image.

However, circles have no end. Time doesn't end. We won't end. Labyrinthine life.

Flashback, warm nights

Almost left behind

No, definitely not left behind, only almost. They are all still with me, those delicate French July nights, but they work on a person differently when they are re-lived. No way to reproduce the heat's scents, the linden trees and bees in Labarthe-Bleys. There is no way. No way to love the warm in the way the Tarn’s air seduces, caresses us, exhausts. No way to forget. No way to desire that forgetting. 

Nothing is going to be left behind, ever. I am true to that goal. 

Nights in the song are plural, and flashbacks in me are also plural, I am plural, and in need of warmth. I am convinced it exists. You are not left behind. We will catch up, make up for lost time.

We exist. Out of time. Or perhaps in it as well, forever. A life you and I had, have.

Suitcase of memories

Oh, how many times have I packed one of those! Sometimes the memories were shaped like color photographs. Other times they were tucked between the pages of books. Others they were in the bottom of the case, in the form of an attractive brochure or a small poster. Nor can I forget the names in my head, the bumps on the tiny roads, the green upon gray upon another green, the scent of wild anise. Those weigh nothing, but no scale can measure what else I am carrying from one country to another.

What I want to carry. What fills my space, every centimeter.

I have chosen to do that. Carry. Back and forth, wanting more, each more becoming an image. In a life that is itself more vintage than not. Suitcase of it always full. Until I decide to empty it, which is always a possibility. The life, the suitcase. You can see that, I'm sure. Moving from one place to another in the world, within the body.

Sometimes you picture me

I'm walking too far ahead

You're calling to me, I can't hear

What you've said

Then you say, "go slow"

And I fall behind

I don't think we ever considered who went first and who followed. I still don't know the order we followed. It depended on the terrain, the country we were in. If it happened to be raining monsoons or snowing a foot a minute. Or Cyprus-hot, where everybody tells you a fake temperature. We were not fake, then. If we fell behind, it was both of us, keeping the same pace. Well, trying to keep it.

It wasn't always a matter of forward walking, though. It was sometimes about laterally moving somewhere else. Not asking how, not looking for precipices. We did that side walking, but I am certain we didn't mean to do it. We could have avoided it, but we didn’t know that, not then. We just moved from our original places, not following our thoughts, or maybe just following a part of them. We needed to think, but we were busy thinking about other things. We forgot where we were going, had broken the thread. We should have apologized. To Ariadne. Spun ourselves home.

We did not know it would be so long, with so much longing. Anyway, I found my way back to you. I knew one was all I could have. Would have. At least I was not holding emptiness in my reddening hands.

The second hand unwinds

If you're lost you can look and you will find me

Time after time

I hope you will find me, because I need you to know where I am and how I am. Because time matters. Some people think it makes things crumble. That is not right. Time erects minds and walls, years and touch. It builds us. It made me a monument. Made it for me.

How I am only with you is written by billions of hours and miles ( with too many metaphors). We need two, four hands to hold on to the same written railing, to keep time from leaving us alone. To remain steady. Knowing our place remains here, in time. Over and over.

I said once I would never leave you. It was so long ago I might be making that up. There is a more important question, though. Let's say I did say I would never go. Did I believe it then? I don’t really know, but probably it wasn’t a lie. Never.

You can always find me, although I’m not sure you believe that. I can hope you know it, at least. For me, at least, there is definitely hope - or consolation - in the fact that you always have had a good sense of direction. You should find your way back. Eventually. You are a natural navigator. You are good at what you do, when you choose to do it.

Just look. I am there, here, shadow by night, star by noon. I do not hide. Not from you.

If you fall, I will catch you, I'll be waiting

Time after time

Just as I always have, since we met. You probably didn’t notice. Or maybe I really didn’t keep you from falling, ever. You did seem to be close-mouthed and resilient, fine without me. Now, the thought came to me, just in case you do need somebody to break your fall, that I am offering to do that. I am not going anywhere, even though I am far away.  

Actually, you won't fall, so I should take that all back. It'll be more like wondering which direction to take. That's the way

Do not ask me; you know the answer to that question. You know how patient I am, although I wasn't always like that. I'm hoping to be more worthy.

If you're lost, you can look and you will find me

Time after time

Except you never seem to be lost, never were groping in the dark for what was not there. My true hope is that you will finally lose your way. Then, when you try to figure out where you are, there I will be, just like Diogenes and his little lamp. At least I’d love to think I could guide you safely, with me, both of us comfortable together. Comfortable being too hard to define. Selfish me.

After my picture fades and darkness has

Turned to gray

Is it possible? Paper photos used to fade, but nowadays they keep their color, they live on the screen. It’s great, until the technology changes and we can’t access our photos in cyberspace. Then they too will be lost, invisible. Until then, I plan to keep the shade I have now. 

And while we’re at it, that part about darkness turning gray is ambiguous. Has darkness ever turned gray other than just before dawn? Maybe this part of the song I'm singing is referring to a good thing. To how the light is a sign of something new. No pictures, either. Just real faces. Nothing faded. All the time in the world on our eager hands.

Also, I bet that by now that old paper photo you had of me on a ferry from one side of the pestuary to the other probably is faded. (I still have that blouse, though. It’s one I bought in Buffalo, at a coop, and is from India.) I haven’t seen the photo in years, but am sure you still have it. The ocean was complete, utter feeling, that day in the sun. That almost-beginning and still.

Watching through windows

You're wondering if I'm okay

Are you? Watching? Wondering? I wonder. Which windows are they? And whose? I can only see the glass streaking a few tears that have mingled on its surface. You are not finished with us, the watching tells me. I know this, because even you are surprised at how faithful a person can be. Even though it's not clear any more which one is looking and where our windows are.

I am wondering if you’re okay. I suspect you are, but you could be better. I want you to be better.

Secrets stolen from deep inside

And the drum beats out of time

There are secrets, yes, but none of them matters. Even the big ones are irrelevant or inconsequential. You should know that. Let sleeping secrets lie. Let beating drums try to rouse them, but don't try it yourself. Let inside and outside be the same. Pulsing. Rhythmic and melodious, even if only one instrument is playing. This can be a solution.

If you're lost you can look and you will find me

Time after time

And you know this now, I'm sure. What I'm not sure about is whether that matters to you any more. Maybe you're never lost, but you can still look. At me, please. I was always there for the seeing. Not a ghost or a demon, because you have none of those in your closets. You will never have any of those. However, you can look beyond the years to this now of ours. The time we have, past but indelible. The handwriting on all the walls we ever walked beside, all kinds: stones or bricks or wooden slats, wattle-and-daub, grass.

We both have read what we've written and sometimes mailed, sometimes stored in a special suitcase. I am not certain about you; I, however, am still rereading that writing, and yes, I'm going in circles. Giddy. Words always d id affect me, and you, that way.

Your windows and even your doors may be closed now, but I am not. Not with this patience I have and this love for your freedom. It feels like a merry-go-round. Horses, colors, happy, hopeful, childish, vinaage music.

If you fall I will catch you, I'll be waiting

Time after time

You are gone now, but this song is still here. This thinking is still the same, just that it's thinking that is coming from further away than before. Further away in time, but not in mind. 

And certainly, definite, not in the music of the stars that are still in my eyes. Waiting. Throughout time, if I am lucky.

And I have been lucky. Time after time.

Time after time