There are four books on my nightstand and two more I’m listening to. For my birthday, a dear friend gave me another one and I wanted to start it immediately. Yesterday, a newsletter with announcements about couple of concerts arrived in my inbox. I sent a friend the message I send far too often without following through: “What do you think about these ones? Should we go to one of them?”
Somewhere among those books and invitations is a story I wrote about a woman who repairs time. People call her a watchmaker. I wish she was real. I would bring her my watch and ask if she could give me back the hours that keep vanishing without a trace.
Most of those hours go into reading, writing, and painting. Given a free afternoon, I am quite capable of disappearing into a book or staying with a canvas until the light changes.
But if I could ask the watchmaker for more time, I would use it for some of the things I usually put off: a concert late in the evening, a book fair or an art show on the “other” side of the city, a museum exhibition I want to see but I keep postponing.
Or would I?
I have been trying to remember the last time I went to the ballet. A few years ago, I saw most of the season’s performances. Ballet was hardly among my first three choices for a Friday evening, or even among my top three “cultural” ways to spend a Friday evening, but a friend loved it and invited me again and again and I enjoyed spending time with her. At first, I went mostly for our conversations during intermission and after the show. And during those conversations, between our talks about books and poetry (I rarely talked about poetry with anyone else), she would point out a gesture I had missed or the expression on a dancer’s face during a difficult passage. We would talk about the moment when the music changed, and the light changed with it. Slowly, I began to notice these things for myself until one evening I realized I was looking forward to the ballet as much as to our conversations.
Then the pandemic changed the shape of our days. By the time the theaters reopened, and I began going out again, my friend had moved away. I chose concerts, plays, sometimes even opera. Somehow, I never chose ballet.
My love for ballet is still there. What I came to enjoy during those years has not disappeared. But when I began going out again, I found myself choosing what I had always chosen before. Ballet had entered my life through my friend and through the evenings we planned together. Without her, no one was asking me to keep a particular Friday free so we could go together. I kept looking to see which new ballets were coming on stage, then deciding I would go another time. I had made time for it for years, and then, almost without noticing, I stopped and returned to old habits.
I think about that when I hear myself say I have no time.
Sometimes it is true. There are weeks when work, family, and the ordinary business of living take every hour I have. But other times, “I have no time” means I have let the week fill up without deciding what I want to make room for. A concert remains a link in a message. I tell myself I’ll go on the next photo walk, or see the next play or film, when life is quieter. Meanwhile, I can listen to Rachmaninoff on Spotify, read at home, and wait for the movie to arrive on Prime Video.
I do enjoy all of those things.
Still, I wonder what I might never discover if I keep choosing only what I already know I love.
My friend gave me more than an invitation to the ballet. She gave me a reason to leave the house on a Friday evening, someone to share it with, and a way into an art I had overlooked. I wonder how many other things we discover that way, by accepting an invitation. Or by making one.
I look again at the three concerts I sent my friend.
Then I write: “Actually, you know what? Pacific Northwest Ballet is opening its season with Serenade. Would you like to go with me?”
A few things I’m making time for this fall
I’m trying to turn more of my saved links into actual plans. Here are a few things on my fall calendar (and one I’m sorry to miss). Perhaps you’ll find something for your list too.
Liliana Sambotin’s solo exhibition at Bellevue Library — sometime between September 29–November 24. I want to see what new pieces Liliana has been creating with glass, light, and color.
Transylvanian Dance with Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri — October 9. I’ll be out of town, and I’m genuinely sad to miss this one. They’ll bring Transylvanian folk songs collected by Béla Bartók into conversation with jazz and improvisation. If you’re in Seattle, please go and tell me what it was like!
The Ring in Concert with the Seattle Symphony — October 29. I’m going with my daughter, who loves horror movies. I don’t, but I’m willing to enter her world for an evening. Especially with a live orchestra.
An Evening at Queen Marie’s Salon — November 6. George Enescu and Ciprian Porumbescu, brought into a Seattle concert hall.
The Romanian Film Festival in Seattle — November 13–15. I’ll be involved behind the scenes with ARCS, but I’m looking forward to sitting down in the dark, too, and letting the films take over for a while.