“There is time to stop and watch the bubbles,” Mariah said earlier today, as we sat on a bench on the south bank of the Thames river, watching two men dip large pieces of rope, tied to the end of tall wooden sticks, into a large bucket of soap, waving billowing bubbles through the wind.
In her lifting poem, Now I Become Myself, May Sarton writes:
“Now there is time and
Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!”
In our first three days, after nearly 40 miles walking only barely the edges of all there is to explore in London, we have also spent a great deal of time stopping to watch the bubbles, to stand still.
We’ve sat under and gazed upwards at the twisting web of strong, sunny sycamore trees.
We’ve stood in the middle of bridges to take in the glide of a swan along the canal, and to delight in the small duck closely trailing behind.
We’ve sat for hours around a dinner table, well after the food had vanished and until the drink finally did the same, laughing and chatting as if the comfort of home spaces could d be carried with us as easily as the belongings strapped to our backs.
We’ve let mist fall over us as we squinted into the light of a sun shower glistening and glinting off a statue of Ghandi nestled into the center of a grassy park.
We’ve eaten cheap American pizza along the river bank, letting the short three hours to be reunited with distant-only-in-geography family forms pass not with haste or great fanfare, but slowly, comfortably, as family would pass three hours, no matter how or when they occur.
We’ve inhaled with widening eyes, tilted our faces upward and gasped at the organ’s first rumble and the choir’s first chord at the evensong we ran through tube stations and pushed through selfie wielding tourists to witness.
We’ve sat on a bench on the south bank of the Thames river, watching as bubbles blow into the air, floating up and out and sparkling through and smiling at the jumping, popping giggles of children as, passing by with their families, they are stopped in delight.
We could rush. This city is vast and intricate and fills us with curiosity. There are so many of its twisting streets we’ve yet to get lost in and we’ll only have four days here before our feet leave for new ground. So we could rush.
We could rush; after all, 100 days is not so long and there is ever so much of this earth over which we could walk. We could rush; after all, ‘now’ is always fleeting and not even weather forecasters can perfectly predict the weather, rendering ‘next times’ vulnerably unknown. We could rush; after all, we are only temporary.
But what, instead, if there were time to stop and watch the bubbles? But what, instead, if we stood still?
For it has been in that sitting, in those inhalations, in those three hours, in that table laughter, in that gazing, in those bubbles, that — unmoving — I have lived all of myself.
We could stand still.
We could stand still; after all, 100 days is not so long and there is ever so much of this earth over which we could walk. We could stand still; after all, ‘now’ is always fleeting and not even weather forecasters can perfectly predict the weather, rendering ‘next times’ vulnerably unknown.
We could stand still; after all, we are only temporary.
callie daniels-howell 