Time as a Construct

Time as a Construct

     I have never been able to fully grasp time as a concept. It’s the thread that holds everything together, and yet it’s something I can totally forget about for large periods of time. I’ve gone through moments in my life wishing for entire years to pass instantaneously due to some emotional desire, not caring what each individual day might bring - I wanted to fast forward and jump past all the experiences I would have had, only to get to that “ultimate” one. That’s idiotic. How could I be so heedless of time and its wonders? How could I not realize the same sixty seconds, or sixty minutes, could be spent in so many different ways? Perceived differently? Agonized over and forgot about? When I’m doing a plank hold for one whole minute during my workouts, it feels like the longest minute of my entire life. Later in the same day, five or even ten whole minutes could pass in the wink of an eye and feel more like a couple seconds than ten minutes.
     Relativity, I’ve found, is the best way to begin explaining time. Time is very dependent on what’s going on inside and around you at that very moment. If I watch the clock and listen to the tocks, time slows to its normal pace, somewhat reminiscent of the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who - if you look at them, they are frozen as statues, but if you blink or look away, they move freely, and very very quickly. Losing track of time is easy to do, friends, and I urge you to take on the challenge I have presented to myself in these past few months. Take each day as its own separate entity. Don’t be like the me of the past, always counting down to the next weekend, the next break, to summertime fun with family and friends. Look forward to each day, and suck all that you possibly can out of it. Be mindful of your time, as it is limited, though as a younger human being it might not seem like it. Just last spring, I came home from a psychology class dealing with mental illness, and we had just wrapped up the chapter dealing with latent illnesses - ones that surface in later years of existence. I was overcome with this crushing emotion of fear and anxiety about the mortality of my family. I am not afraid of death for myself, and in fact welcome it, but thinking about the eventual decay of my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, mentally and physically…well, it was not pretty, and I was torn to pieces.
     I came to terms with it and pasted myself back together, waiting for time to come weave the splintered fragments closed again.
     Time, then, is not merely a construct. Time is many things. It is a healer, a mourner, a comforter, a teacher - more often than not preaching tough love and resilience. Time is willing to be your friend, your guide, an invaluable asset in your life, if only you’d stop and take a moment to say hello and keep it wrapped around your little finger.
     Therefore I leave you with a warning and an encouragement via poetry, though it’s very much unlike my normal style. Enjoy, friends. This coming week we will all be back to the collegiate grindstone.
Chance Execution

Execute yourself beneath thought.
Feel your destruction galvanize
wrongly placid thoughts, shove askew naivety
past the earthquake memory’s afterthought.
Taste reaction boiling everything ivory because of her
over an experience of failed love.
Accept freedom - love ferociously despite her!
rather than pushing yourself down,
launching into her abandoned friends,
opinions she the exquisite nerve
under skin placed alluringly warm
regarding romantic language, during your everything
and nothing.
No surrender. Resistance shouldn’t prove difficult
back against gossip knots whispering down your spine.
Treatment via punishment:
skirting other years
near to days, near to weeks,
time poking among your sidewalk thoughts,
frail theories now keenly harden,
dreamt during the tranquil night.

Fight me with words.
Fight me with belligerent phrases -
upward, worthwhile phrases, tested for
warlike pollution, for warlike shame
beyond rage’s armament inside needles
after goodbye. Pierce the harmony chuckle
behind somebody’s animal eyes, beside somebody’s memory face,
until the poison from operation
spreads, pathetic
despite a stranger’s stride toward sugar song
unless a prison traps the fingers
in silver, below all light.
Cagey within a jealous box
beneath an agonizing name –
charismatically persuasive; offensive and vivacious.
All apologies she’s accepting now,
worming through your blended brain. Relinquish her, until
after her rhythms decompose one another,
all pictures and records
through the regret around accidental versus deliberate.
Walk away. This war is no longer yours to lie down for.

~V