“A net for catching days”

More and more I have the sense of one day spinning into the next and the next— until now, this morning, summer’s gone, and it is the autumn equinox. For a brief moment days and nights are equal. For a brief moment I pause in the twilight. More and more I feel the need for a net, for the accountability of days filled with something that matters.

Up here on this small island called Madeline— named after Madeleine Cadotte, the daughter of an Ojibwe chief— the stars and even the milky way are visible. Last night the nearly full moon rose over the water. Immensity under the night sky and the vast silence re-ignite my desire to bow down before the miracle of being beneath this tower of darkness sprinkled with moonlight, to “labor with both hands at sections of time.”

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.
It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
— Annie Dillard