Born In Time
I sit with my son by the river in Le Bugue just watching it flow. My husband and daughter are out on the water canoeing and the morning is gently grey, a cool respite before the fierce afternoon heat bursts into flames of yellow, red and gold.
Not so long ago, it would have been my son out on the water, when our daughter was simply a cherished dream I carried close to my heart. Now, less than a week before his sixteenth birthday, I gaze across at his head, bent over some Ancient Greek study. My mind swims through those entwined currents of sorrow and joy so typical of this realm of ours where all that we are is characterised by change. I understand suddenly that I will be fiercely proud of the man he is about to become and yet in every interaction I will see the boy he was, bristling with bright sparks of energy and fire. Born in time we may be but the older I get the more I understand that time himself is an unknowable creature who moves neither forwards nor backwards but with a direction all of his own.
That song of Bob’s has walked with me during the two weeks we have spent here in the Dordogne with family. It has been around thirty years since I first visited this region and I have been back every year or two since. You can’t put a price on the consistency of these visits through such a relatively long period of time. Each year that I return to this cradle of humanity, where some of our earliest ancestors strode, I am struck by the speed with which we creatures of a day move through our brief lives. I feel the age in myself and yet the landscape around me remains unchanged. The valleys, hills, caves and rivers look on and smile as we rush about our affairs. The Dordogne has always seemed to be perfect location for time spent contemplating the ancient wisdom of the Buddha which realigns us with a reality worlds away from the frenetic pace of modern life.
It goes without saying that there has been a very different colour to our visit here this time as there was last year to a lesser extent. ‘Everywhere I look, I see your eyes’ Mick Jagger sings in the song Angie. In the current absence of so many I see the faces of days gone by, even as we lay foggy webs for future recall over the top of present memory. This year is even quieter than last and yet the echoes of all of our past activity here resonate at a clearly audible frequency. Sitting in the shrine room at Sakya Changlochen Ling a tiny number of us were fortunate enough to receive teachings last weekend. After a year where this had been an impossibility for my family and I, the world slid seamlessly back into place as it always does in such situations. We sat in the fragrant stillness and I felt the living presence of all the occasions we have sat with our Lama and listened to such powerfully medicinal words.
‘Behind every tree, there’s something to see’ Bob sings in Huck’s Tune. Whenever we have been out and about in this beautiful region I have heard the footsteps of time past. Sometimes I have felt that, if I just turned a corner or looked over my shoulder, I would catch sight of the shy ghosts of yesteryear who follow me everywhere. At some point I drove across the bridge in Le Bugue, listening to Man in The Long Black Coat and musing about smoke on the water and rumbling forces. I gazed across at the veranda of Chez Dix Neuf. Almost five years to the day a dear friend of mine and I sat there, full of hope for all things. We watched as a series of remarkable fireworks exploded the night sky on le quinze aout. How could we have conceived a dream so monstrous that it would contain such events and consequences as we are now living through?
On a quiet afternoon, sunny and showery by turn, my husband and I stood together in the graveyard at Rouffignac and I was unbearably moved. Generations of families are buried in this place, their memories tended in beautifully kept family plots. Flowers and statues of the Virgin Mary fill the air with love and sanctity. As we moved amongst the gravestones we seemed to reach a place in a dance I hadn’t realised until that moment we were in. On the slender breezes, to steal from my beloved Virgil, a shadowy vision of the future arose and hand in hand we turned towards it. Time showing us a brief glimpse of his cards before fading into the insubstantial air once more.
I think in the end, as I have found throughout my life, someone else -Bob in my case more often than not- has already said it better. To quote from that song I’ve been hearing:
‘On the rising curve
Where the ways of nature will test every nerve
You won’t get anything you don’t deserve
Where we were born in time.’ Bob Dylan, Born In Time
