dave darts towards the car – month twelve

I Waited Too Long
The holidays got me. Heaven forbid, I actually relaxed and got all out of routine. I slept in. I stayed up. I ate my fill. The result of all this enjoyment was my first real Art of Waiting slip up. Waiting too long, my last photos of the project came not in December 2010, but in January 2011. I cheated.

Allow me some defense. My little plastic camera needs daylight, and there is so little of it in these mid-winter months. So I was waiting for the time when I could wait intentionally, and all by myself, and in the several short hours of sunshine, outside in the crisp cold. I was waiting for what never happened. That’s one of the problems I have with waiting. Waiting leads to shelving. To putting things off. To forgetting. To “too late”.

Looking back on this year long odyssey of intentional limbo I’ve learned a lot about myself and waiting. I’ve learned that good things do come to those who wait (as I’m waiting for my film to prove). I’ve learned that waiting slows me down, and when I take the time to listen to my insides, there is a lot to hear. I’ve also learned that I am not a patient man.

This last picture, fittingly, captures my failure to wait. It is a small moment that happens dozens of times in a day.

I am leaving a brunch with my family, heading out into a block long walk to the cold car. My family includes two young kids with legs half the length of mine. Legs that take twice as long to walk. I am getting colder. Under the guise of opening the doors and warming up the car, I refuse to wait. Impatience rules as I dart towards the car, leaving kids and wife in my snowy dust. Arriving at the car, I take out my camera, turn around and capture my wife, walking with plodding patience to the car. This picture, while unremarkable, may be my most typical and true of my real relationship with waiting.

When it comes to putting things off and forgetfulness, I may be a professional, but that is not the waiting I long for. If this project has revealed my waiting weaknesses, it has also given me waiting to wish for. I want to master the art of waiting; intentional, purpose full, mind full waiting. Waiting that sees. At this art I am at best an apprentice, but the problem is there are so few to study under. We are all of us hurrying forwards, running to stand still, into another year that we cannot believe has blurred by.

In hope,
Dave Von Bieker