We Are Time

Monday morning. Usually I catch a bus that takes me to work by a rather circuitous route; this gives me some rare time for Reading For Enjoyment. But there is one day each year when spring, or an early sensation thereof, reveals itself to Canberra dwellers and allows us to hope that the worst of another long, bleak winter is over. Monday was that day, so instead of my usual bus I caught the express, which arrives in no time but involves a 10-minute walk from the bus stop to work. So there I was, feeling good within myself, stepping out along the treelined avenue, Bob Dylan’s “Time Out Of Mind” album playing on the Walkman to drown out the traffic noise. And I set to thinking about what a surprising thing that record is, unnecessary (as Dylan records have been for 20-odd years now) but utterly mesmerising; how Dylan is singing songs about death with a voice that at times is almost not there at all, as if softening us up for the day we will wake to the news that he has gone; how the harmonica at the end of “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” sounds like the wind blowing through the instrument after its player has left the stage. Then I got to thinking that if I live to be as old as my father, who considered himself to have lived a full life, then I will only experience the uplifting vibe of this particular one day of the year 23 more times. And then I started to think that that would also mean there will only be 23 more Boxing Day test matches; 23 more Christmas days; 23 more Eurovision song contests. And that I’m in no way ready to start any kind of countdown of that nature just yet. At about that point I decided I should have ignored the call of springtime and stuck with the serious business of sitting in front of the television watching the Olympic Games. (Only five more Olympic Games? ... Oh, stop that.)