After The Hours

What separates us is not distance, but time. Yes there is a time for everything: Meeting and parting; hurting and healing. A time for forgetting and remembering. A time for discovering and rediscovering. (No time but now.)

I watched "The Hours" on DVD this afternoon. Before it came out on theaters and when it finally ran in theaters, a lot of my friends were talking and raving about it. I didn't get to watch it then. And so a while ago, I was excited in viewing it. I even expected it to be a 3-hour film. Somehow I was waiting for the rising action and then the climax and then a resolution. As it progressed, I was thinking and hoping that it would not end yet so I would have much more to enjoy. But then, it ended. Just that, it was done. As I pushed the off button of the DVD player, I murmured, hype.

I went to my bedroom and napped myself through twilight. Slowly, images of the film emerged and played in my mind--how Virginia Woolf, the woman who reads her novel and another woman will meet at one point. At one time. Coincidence might be the name, but fate? Oh what's the difference.

Alane Rollings dreams and waits for this one bit of good news: A certain person with charms and hesitations... someone who would have bothered about her.
Me, I dream and wait for this one interruption: A certain person with charms and hesitations... someone who would have bothered about me.

We live with expectations. They say the best things are for free. For me, the sweetest thing is possibility. But then I do not just want to keep on expecting. To expect is to be in a two-way road, you'll only end up with one thing. I do not wish to settle for that. Instead, I want my life to be guided with wonder--that well bountiful with mystery. Wonder gives us a sense of appreciation for what we see and have, that distinct contentment, and yet a silent knowing that there is more--a silent provocation, we want more.

I've been waiting for great twists and action in The Hours, but life is not built on that. Often our lives are not just that action-packed. Our lives are built on small moments and if we're lucky, we thrive on epiphany. We change and move through quiet and swift transitions that we didn't plan. That is our bit of action. We look back and ask ourselves, What happened? Where did my smooth skin go? Where did he go? Where did the hours go? Slowly, veins raise themselves in relief in our hands, wrinkles announce their presence and permanence. You are old. Suddenly. You are here. What do you face and how do you face it?

We have met, loved, lost and recovered; and all it took us was a matter of time.