Time in New Orleans

Time
By
Debbie Lindsey

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can’t put it off another day
I am sitting here a year earlier -- not a full twelve months, but nevertheless living within the year previous to the day you might read this. Writing and supposing what the year two thousand ten will bring, I am able to imagine myself suspended briefly in time -- and staring it straight in the eye. All the while I keep hearing the Chambers Brothers emphatically harmonize to me that time waits for no one.
So what’s in a number? When I go to sleep on December thirty-first to the sounds of fireworks and mischief and awake the next morning mere hours will have passed, not a year, not a lifetime, just some hours. And yet things will have changed – our expectations will have changed.
In every corner of the world people will observe with acute awareness that moment when Father Time passes the torch to another year, another configuration of numbers. Just symbols. But as the hours give way on New Year’s Eve, we are given a chance to realize how precious time is and how much we want and how much we need to occur during the next twelve months of moments.
In some of those corners folks will resolve to end a war, others will await a new life to be born pinning all their hopes and dreams upon that child, and some will search in their mirrors looking for a glimpse of their lost youth. Expectations vary for sure, but everyone will have them. And the making of resolutions for the new year often brings those expectations to fruition.
Anticipation…oh now I’ve done it; now there’s a battle of the bands between Carly Simon and the Chambers to dominate my personal soundtrack during this column. But anticipation does go hand in hand with time. We all think, sing, compose, or pray for some control over time or at least some optimism to see it along. We anticipate time and feel the pulse of the word, the power it invokes. Even the fear.
I don’t care what others say
They say we don’t listen anyway
Time has come today
As I grow older I cherish each minute. Yet those minutes are so fleeting. Swear to god there are less of those precious minutes in each of those hours than there used to be. At thirty, you (yes, you the young readers of this magazine) will note that time just seems to fly and that maybe sixty seconds no longer fill a minute. And at forty you will swear too that I was right – the birthdays just seem to speed by and your children are so grown up – like over night. Then when fifty hits, you will not be joking at all when you say to younger friends that there truly are just thirty second to a minute, and wasn’t it just yesterday that such and such happened and where did all the time go and youth is wasted on the young and don’t wish your life away…
There’s no place to run
I might get burned up by the sun
But I had my fun
I’ve been loved and put aside
I’ve been crushed by tumbling tide
I hear the songs. I remember the age-old adages that caution against squandering one’s life. I don’t wish my life away. Not anymore. But that’s what I was doing all those years when I’d look at the clock at work and will it to speed towards quittin’ time. Well, I don’t wanna quit -- I want to stay in this game as long as possible. Still, I diminish the moment as I freeze up against time. Instead of fighting time’s undertow, I should flow with it and let it bring me back to shore – perhaps a bit further down the beach, but it’s another place to see, another place to be.
And what of those New Year’s resolutions and expectations? Why not look forward in time, not discarding the present, just realizing that some things need to change or rearrange? Surely our own mayoral election ahead of us can only bring improvements. And we will not reminisce over the economy. The future just might bring cures and catharses, redemption and atonement. A Saints’ Super Bowl, more Abita seasonals.
Our world has not done so great with the years already given. And we need only look in our own backyards to see the piles of promises broken and abandoned. So what’s in a number? Hope, change, reparations, answers? The clock’s hand has moved on since I sat at this desk and soon I will enter the new year, same as the one you, my reader, already know. The Chambers are still trapped in time, in vinyl, reminding me that now the time has come. I will take the advice, hit save, print and see you in two thousand ten with lots of high hopes.