Waiting and Dancing

8:21.
 39 minutes till bedtime begins.
Now,
8:22.
  One more minute gone.
   I watch them live with fascination. They're possibilities, each and every single minute. Each one is unknown, for each is currently (to use the formal word) unassigned.
   There are things I could do - a letter to my grandmother has been waiting too long to be written, dinner has not really been prepared or eaten, and Notes From a Tilt-a-Whirl is still unread beyond the second chapter, merely for lack of time.
   But nothing pressing. Nothing that demands completion, nothing that sternly reminds me that by tomorrow it needs to be done. No calls, no conversations, nothing but a dog, myself, and my music.
8:26.
   Why must it be measured? Are not the best moments timeless, when time itself falls away before the wonder and beauty of living in that moment?
It's limited. Scarce. My mind no sooner sees the time then it measures how much I have left, how much I could steal from responsibilities to (not have fun) rest, to breath. to sit perhaps a moment, close my eyes, and open them again to see the world a little differently. To have the moment where the weight of life falls aways and I leave it lying on the ground, getting up from the chair to walk straighter for the weight left behind.
   In daring moments I watch an entire TV episode - but who really has 48 minutes and 32 seconds (including credits) to spend watching imagination and truth mix?
   But tonight, I forget the sensible side of my mind that measures time, and forget the to-do list that will be waiting still more urgently tomorrow, for tonight's unexpected freedom reminded me of something.
   When I am too restless to enjoy sitting still, I must take time to wait. When the 39 minutes bother me because I do not know exactly what I (and I hope God) have planned, I have to release my disciplined control. When 39 unplanned minutes are too short for me to enjoy, I have forgotten the meaning of peace.
    Three minutes can be enough. Sometimes one. Not just to sit and let the weight fall, but the minutes of complete enjoyment, the joy in the unplanned, un-needed, and unknown time where I am willing to let duty's weight rest on the road. I look up the way to walk, not to see the rough road that tomorrow's horizon leaves looming, but to realize I have been given a pace to walk apace, breathing, weightless, with a twist that may lead to nowhere. But twists that lead to nowhere lay beside the fey border of the joyous unknown, and thirty-nine minutes are enough to change a life.
   Leave my burden on the road. I will come back to it, I will even shoulder it again, but I been given the time to walk off the beaten path my will has described, and remember that living is not just a journey. For the humans who dare to dance along the road, the dance turns the road into joy, and the arduous steps into lifts and leaps, all started by a twist in the road that lead to nowhere. When I come back, when the twist turns again to the burden I left, I may shoulder it with a sigh, but in the dust beneath my feet I still trace the steps I learned in the timeless minutes (I do not know how many now). I learned to wait, to make three minutes enough. Maybe even one minute. Maybe one minute tomorrow will be enough, now that I have been given so many tonight. Maybe I waive to the fey not as farewell, but as a promise to see them again tomorrow, and to learn another step, another dance, another way to make the rough road a starlit, fair-folk meadow filled with the steps of a dance.