Roll over

I don't roll over. I am too dignified.

But people think that time rolls over. They divide time into chunks and subdivide them and then they number the chucks and subchunks keep track of them and set all kind of expectations based on the chunks.

I am well aware of the cyclical nature of life - sleeping follows hunting and chasing Ollie and various meals and treats, time after time after time. Night follows day. Cooler follows hotter. But I am not so interested in larger concepts like calendars and dreaming about the past, hoping for the future. I like to be Now.

I AM now. I make my Person's life more now than she and all her yoga classes could ever hope to manage. She can stand on one leg or upside down but she has trouble being now. And so it seems to be with people. They are always elsewhere. And I am always here.

So here I am now, on a hike, seeing swans and mergansers and ducks and a muskrat who is also unaware of the calendar but just knows that now it is warm and sunny and the ice is open and there are reeds to chew. I am looking ahead, not to an ideal of how I will be if I try harder next year, but to what is hiding in those bushes over there. Some other creature very much now. After all, we really only have right now.