The clock on the dresser said 8 am. I had woken up. I was just about to move myself out of bed (and perhaps even make myself a cup of tea). I was almost at the brink of thinking up some ideas to write on. Maybe even make breakfast.
I was just about to place my present at the right moment in the scale of my life between the blank that came right after I went to bed last night and this morning when I rose out of the foggy depths of sleep.
Time was supposed to pass slowly because it was Sunday.
It was just when I was moving in slow motion through the foggy recesses of my mind as time was taking clear shape after sleep that my eye browsed over the top right hand corner of my laptop screen which I opened rather slowly inkeeping with the slowness of the morning.
A pleasant surprise. My bearings had to be re-set.
Just now wasn’t just now. 8 am wasn’t 8 am.
Just now was really before just now by an hour!
What a treat. Daylight Saving Time ends today.
One more hour during which I could think about moving my legs across the side of the bed to get up. One more hour that I could think of making that tea. One more hour before which I would need to apprehend the right location of my moment, grasp it in a firm grip and place it in the right spot between the past and the future. For the next one hour, the present could have some loose play.
The moment as the present did not really exist.
It will be the same for the rest of the day. Lunch-time will not be lunch-time yet, dusk will not be dusk yet, time to go to bed will not be time to go to bed yet. The quality of light outside, the reaction of our bodies to the day, to hunger, to fatigue will not determine time. It will not remind us to perform a certain act. Eat, take a walk, rest, go to bed.
There will be another chance to act. One more chance to perform. A second chance to prove we can do it. For one more hour.
Time will not be time yet.
Oh the pleasure of deferment, of procrastination without guilt, of pushing back without losing time.
Karma. It does exist. I know that I will have to pay back the hour I gain today with an hour of my disappeared life another time, another day next year. Like Mephistopheles to my Faustus, that day will demand that I pay back the hour I gain now.
“For at my back I always hear/ Time’s winged chariot hurrying near/ And yonder all before us lie/ Deserts of vast eternity.” I know.
But for now, my present is like a memory. Time that’s not real. I can live this hour over and over and over again tweaking it any way I want to, for one whole day.
I can live my life in slow motion, savour the moment, live my existence “changed not in kind but in degree,/ The instant made eternity.”
My Robert Browning will triumph over my Andrew Marvell today.
bottledworder 
Thanks , I love it
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i heard that DST was an invention of Ben Franklin as an effort to conserve on candle wax and ‘recapture’ the hour lost to earlier evenings.
-mike
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The end of Daylight Savings Time is like a little holiday. 🙂
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And in yet another dimension, your post reminded me of Andrew Marvel’s “Coy Mistress”:
“Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime…
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;”
Great post!
Karen
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Thank you! Somehow I said John Donne! Edited the post. And the Browning is from The Last Ride Together.
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My cats haven’t figured it out yet either… they have been waking me up at 4:30, then again at 5:30 before I drag myself out at 6:30 because they get more insistent each time… LOL
Very good blog, enjoyed reading! 😀
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Yesterday was one of the longest days I’ve ever had and I loved it. I hate daylight savings time, messing with Mother Nature. I hate springing forward and the lone goof-off/lobbyist in Washington that keeps it going every year, despite what The People want. Someday I’ll move to where there is no DST, like Kentucky. 🙂
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Well, I just got so carried away with this comment that I decided to delete ti from here and use it as a post on my blog–how’s that?
Thanks for your bright assessment of the time change, I needed that!
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😦 I live in Perth Western Australia and we have no daylight savings, tonight I have a 10 pm meeting with Houston that would be 9 pm if our backward numpty voters voted it in!
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Small point. Daylight saving time ended in the USA. For us in the UK, this happened a week earlier. Despite this, I get lots of mail this weekend mentioning it as though the whole world operated at the same time. Not an issue with a personal blog, but there are a few companies who deserve a rant about the internet and America not being the same thing.
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It’s confusing. True.
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And all the farmers will have more daylight for their crops. 🙂 (I’ve actually heard that, sad to say.) Enjoy that hour now and don’t worry about spring payback. It’s a long time in the future.
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🙂 !
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Reblogged this on MetaRead360 Small Press presents and commented:
NOTE: Although I like getting an “extra” hour in the fall…it was at the loss of an hour in the spring! Not fair…;)
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Hey! Thanks so much for stopping by my blog! I’ve really enjoyed perusing yours…you are a great writer and your posts are very interesting to read!!
I’ll definitely be stopping by regularly. 🙂
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not in saskatchewan!
to me, being as late a riser as possible, it just means an hour less of sunshine and more darkness. whose idea was this, some vampire’s?
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now that would be a popular idea!
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Reblogged this on gettlost and commented:
Beautiful. My favroite part is this; I can live my life in slow motion, savour the moment, live my existence “changed not in kind but in degree,/ The instant made eternity.”
I try to live each moment. I don’t believe times exists
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I always look forward to gaining the hour, but usually I end up sleeping through it either because I’m out that night or because I’m generally sleep deprived. Some year I will get up at the old time and treasure that extra hour!
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Our cats aren’t on Daylight Savings Time yet, so I’ll live vicariously through your joy 🙂
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Kids are like cats (or is it the other way around?). In the days before my husband and I had kids, we also enjoyed that special gift of an extra hour. Now, we just wake up when the kids awake and it’s an hour “earlier.” I comfort myself with the thought that this is just a stage in life.
I’ll enjoy vicariously though the catless/childless, too.
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Too funny 🙂
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Ha ha. Cats seem to be good timekeepers!
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At least you didn’t post a rant like I did. The thing drives me crazy.
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What a lovely post. I love the end of daylight saving. This morning my dog woke up at 430 am I was soo angry like “no, go back to sleep i have an hour more of sleep ” but she was insistent to get up and be let out. I realized time to her is still the same. When you gotta go, you gotta go. The world around you may interpret time different, but with her? The world just keeps on spinning and her routine remains the same even if the passing by world is changing. SO , i was outside with slippers in pjs being walked by her at 430am opposed to the usual 530.
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Thanks. Some had the same problem with cats. 🙂
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You’ll have to pay that hour back with Daylight Savings Time comes around in the summer 🙂
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Yes, here in the UK our clocks went back one week ahead!
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I had that feeling last week when British Summer time ended last week, and I woke at six thirty and got up at seven. I had an industrious morning (rare, for me,) but still ended up running late.
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🙂
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