slow time

We missed frost earlier this week by a degree or two, just enough to clip the basil (basil is wussy that way ;-)), but tomorrow night should be definitive.   We've moved from steaming amber spice orchards (as the poet puts it) to "post-frost" quiet.  We brought the pumpkins in earlier this week, picked the last of the okra and tonight I'll bring in the green tomatoes for pickling and/or ripening (depending on how far along they are).  The first fire in the cookstove will probably be tomorrow or the next day.  We picked the last raspberries on Sunday afternoon, and they became the last batch…
One of the tensions in my life -is that between two kinds of time. "Fast Time" is the world I live in, the one with a two hour meeting scheduled at 7pm, my husband's classes at 12:35, Eli's bus at 8:15 and 3:30... payments due by the first of the month, etc... It is the world run on clocks and calendars, where expectations can be fixed and formalized. All of us live in fast time in some measure, some of us almost completely, others only barely. There is, however, no good way of escaping it entirely. I also live in slow time. Slow time is the world of things that cannot be subject to…