Three Seconds

There I am on a Sun­day morn­ing in the 70’s, happy that we are done with church and the tight, itchy clothes are off. I am read­ing Mar­maduke, Peanuts, Doones­bury (try­ing, but I don’t yet get irony) and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. I read the comics for many years. I have never really taken to read­ing a paper after I quit read­ing the comics. Ripley’s, one Sun­day: a human heart can beat one mil­lion times in about 10 days. To beat one bil­lion times? 22years.

There are bil­lions of pho­tos on the flickr web­site. Most mam­mals live about a bil­lion heart­beats, humans live three. If we mea­sured time in heart­beats, what would a clock look like?

When I have a day/month like I am hav­ing today…sometimes I think: there are many things that can hap­pen in a life, and this is one of them. What if all my worst sce­nar­ios play out? It is a part of this life that I am liv­ing. What if I get every­thing I think I want? The heart beats the same through the good and the bad; lit­tle slower, lit­tle faster. The same.

One thing hearts don’t like to do is beat too reg­u­larly. A heart that does not have a dose of chaos in its rhythm gets sick very quickly. The irreg­u­lar­ity keeps it…regular. Being able to exactly pre­dict the next beat is not good. Every one is a lit­tle tiny bit off from the last one. Like people.

I can feel your heart. I have said that before. What I am really say­ing is, I can feel time (finally), I get the pre­cious­ness of this moment, this moment, this moment. Oh, and Thank you for get­ting me in touch with the clock. I want to be awake for this.