An Accounting of Time

 The following is a single day's account of my own contemplations.  I wrote each excerpt randomly throughout the past year in the back of a notebook of mine.  I decided to finally put them all together and post them here.  Structured by a linear concept of time, these personal and often highly critical passages of mine are a tribute to the illusion of time in general.  Throughout the development of this work, I was also reading a book by Allen Lightman entitled Einstein's Dreams.  The book itself is a series of vignettes based around a small town in Switzerland where Albert Einstein was once a Patent Clerk.  Each chapter described a reality drastically altered by the function of time.  Each vignette essentially applies an element or concept of Special Relativity, hence the title of the book.  I believe Relativity is a result of time's illusory qualities.  Phillip K. Dick's bizarre experience which I blogged about earlier along with Buddhist concepts of time as not existing in the form of a past, present, and future but rather simply in the here and now hint at this as well. The account of mine which I have gathered together and posted below speaks to the struggles of living within time's illusion.  This struggle is the same struggle that interpreters of the Bible must deal with, whether they realize it or not.

8:30 AM.

            Good morning.  Alarm clocks are my least favorite greeting.  Mine has a flat, digital tone.  A cacophonous annoyance and I need contacts to see.  Right now I am blind and I like it.  Shut out the world and take me back to my own.  And the clock will not stop.  Just pause it and let me stay in bed.  It’s like a vignette in Einstein’s Dreams.  The morning is like an alternative reality.  The more you want time to slow down, the faster it speeds up.  People try all their lives to live a little longer, and when they come to die, discover that they have not lived.  Oh, good morning to you too Mr. Thoreau.  

            Last night I was, once again, too motivated for my own good.  Rolling over to face the ceiling, I discover the result of my nocturnal habits.  C-A-R-P-E D-I-E-M.  Written on nine blank sheets of printing paper, ordered, and sticky-tacked, it grips the plaster directly over my head.  I planned this out.  Each black letter takes an entire sheet of paper.  Good job Dan.  You wasted paper and thought ahead at the same time.  Without contacts, I cannot even see the numbers on my clock, but I can see these letters.  I can read this.  It reminds me of the E on the top of those vision charts.  I planned this out.

            C-A-R-P-E N-O-C-T-E-M would probably be a more accurate phrase to describe my lifestyle.  Even my mind is more active after sunset.  But it would be redundant to put that on my ceiling.  I do not need help in that area.  I need help waking up.  Thank you 3:00 AM motivation.  Carpe Diem is getting me out of bed.

12:43 PM.

            I am late.  The corner of my computer says 12:43 PM.  I slam it closed and pull myself off the couch.  My legs strain and ache as I stand up.  My muscles are torn from working out.  Self-improvement comes with a price.  Or maybe it is just vanity.  I quickly move into the dining room with my open, ugly, dark green backpack hanging from my fingertips.  I swing it on to a chair and snatch my yellow folder and shove it in.  Stray paper crinkles but who cares?  I am late.  I believe my watch is taunting me as the second hand moves closer to the ninth dash on the left.  I try to be carefree but I suppose I am often ruled by time like so many others.  As long as I don’t start worshipping it the way they do in another one of the vignettes in Einstein’s Dreams, I know I have not completely lost myself.  But I am still late.

            Throwing the backpack over my shoulder, I run out the door, down the crumbling concrete steps and onto the wet pavement.  The wet comes from melting slabs of ice resting in jagged strips on the road, grey and speckled with grit.  Water falls from roofs, twigs, gutters, everything.  Melting.  The dripping reminds me of this movie I used to watch when I was young.  I always remember this beautiful song in the background.  “We’re walking in the air.”  Other than that, it was a short, silent, animated film.  It was called The Snowman.  This little boy makes a snowman.  The snowman comes to life, and they travel to the North Pole and see Santa Clause together.  The next day, the boy comes out of his house to find the snowman has melted.  As a little boy myself, I use to cry at this part.  The Snowman is the only movie I have ever cried in.

            I am now hurrying along the sidewalk trying to get to class in time.  The sunlight reflecting off the damp street and the brown puddles, like reflecting pools for parasites, feels as if it is slapping my eyeballs.  I have to squint.  My watch says 12:44.

            I reach a fork leading to my destination.  A shortcut through soggy grass and slush.  I glance at my shoes.  They are new.  White K-Swiss Limited Editions.  Limited Editions that were probably sold everywhere for a long time before the line was discontinued at a price fifteen bucks more than the other K-Swiss choices.  Still, they are that new white that never lasts.  Some people hate that blinding shade and others try to preserve it as long as they can.  I like to savor that out of the box glare. 

            So now I have a choice.  Do I sacrifice the shoes for the sake of time, or do I sacrifice the time for the sake of the shoes?  In sacrificing one, am I then being ruled by the other?  Now my shoes and my watch are taunting me simultaneously.  Consumerism and schedules.  Whatever.  I take the shortcut.

            Soon I reach the hallway to my classroom.  The door is closed.  Class started already and now I am officially late.  Everyone loves to glance around at you when you enter late.  I reach the door, open it, and walk in.  Everyone glances around at me.  What a surprise.  I was two minutes late.  The professor ignores me as I take my seat.  My shoes are dirty.  It doesn’t even matter. 

2:12 PM.

So much of life is trivial.  So much of life is bullshit.  My brother once told me 95 percent of life was bullshit.  I try and focus on the 5 percent that matters.  In the words of Forest Gump, “That’s all I got to say about that.”

3:45 PM.

            I am in my honors class.  It is called “Imagination”.  The first day of class I think we had to define the word “Imagination”.  Actually I do not even remember the first day, but I bet that is exactly what we did.  I believe imagination is that intangible essence of mind that creates.  We too often confine the definition to creations of art, literature, and so on.  Based on my definition, every thought, feeling, and response is part of the imagination.  Every product of my mind is a product of my imagination.  My voice.  My inner-conversation.  My inner-monologue.

            I must be paying attention.

7:43 PM.

            The local Co-op constantly reminds me of my life plan.  Come to think of it, not a single grocery store, shopping mall, or Wal-Mart will let me forget it. 

I am actually writing this while sitting on a toilet.  It is a surprisingly good place to do so.  I pride myself on the fact that I have read entire books solely while on the toilet.  No, I do not read whole books during a single bathroom break.  I am not a speed-reader.  I am not constipated.  It takes a long time to read a book this way, but it is worth it.  Every public stall should have a magazine rack.  Every household bathroom should have a bookshelf.  If the world did this, maybe we would be a smarter population. 

Anyway, on with my grocery store explanation.  In my junior year of high school, I distinctly remember walking into the local Co-op to buy lunch.  I was wandering the isles when suddenly I opened my ears to all the conversations around me.  I would switch my focus from one dialogue to another as I moved through the store.  In psychology, they call this the “Cocktail Party Effect”, when you can select and listen to specific individuals even among a crowd of gab.  Essentially, I was eavesdropping.  Eavesdropping on segments of everyday life within the Co-op.  That is when the moment came.  My moment.  “Which oranges should we get?”  “I hate two percent” “I need to pick up some Emergen-C for Susan.” “Don’t get skim.” “This one has too many calories.” “That’ll be $23.68.” 

Mediocrity is my greatest fear.  All those people living their lives.  What are they living for?  How do they feel about 9 to 5, Monday to Friday?  I despise it and I am terrified of it.  These people live mundane, monotonous lives and I refuse to end up like them.

In hindsight this was perhaps a rather judgmental generalization on my part, but that is not the point.  The point is, in that moment I decided to make sure my life would not end up as some mediocre, ineffectual existence.  I want to do something great.  I want to die feeling accomplished.  Accomplished and complete. 

That was my metamorphosis.  When Kafka turned Gregor Samsa into an insect, the flaws of the members of his family became blatantly apparent.  Some might say his transformation forced his family to become better people, even though they remained incredibly flawed through to the last page.   They morphed too.  If I never forget my moment, if I remain transformed, will everyone around me become better too?  Probably not.  Despite everyone else, this path is worth it.

11:16 PM.

            The past few hours I have been thinking about paths.  Borges’ paths are the kinds of paths I am thinking about.  Not just any old path in any old garden.  I am thinking about the metaphorical ones.  My choices and my life.  I should not take myself too seriously.  People probably should not take most of life too seriously.  95 percent of it anyway.  There are endless choices to endless scenarios.  Luckily I usually do not get too caught up in it.  Or at least, I do not think I do.  I am glad I am not a whining baby like T.S. Eliot.  “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?” “So how should I presume?”  I am glad I am a product of Postmodernism.  Apparently the previous age could not handle the complexity of a technologically advanced world.  It reminds me of the generational divide that makes itself most apparent in department store checkout lines.  The self-checkout always has the younger, more computer literate generation.  Of course, this is not always true, but it seems like just about everyone over the age of forty has to go through the assisted checkout. 

            Paths.  I almost forgot.  I really do think Robert Frost was right.  Taking the path less traveled by will make all the difference.

11:56 PM.

“Hole in the Earth” by Deftones.  I hear this song and something inside is pulled to the floor.  Take a net and toss it over your heart and let the weights carry it to the bottom.  Rock bottom.  What is it even about?  This song.   

I replay my day, from when I was listening to it on repeat for nearly an hour.  Who does that?  I was reading Never Let Me Go in the sunlight.  Upon a warm blanket lain across the dewy green grass, I bathed my body in the sun and my mind in the story.  I guess that explains my feeling.  The song reminds me of the book, and there goes my heart again.  Yet this feeling has more.  It’s not just from some book.  I’m thinking of Hannah.  Let me remember and keep me solid.  I will not break and I will not feel.  But my god let me remember.  It’s too tempting not to.

The seats are hard.  Of curving smooth wood laminate, stained dark for visual appeal, they are synthetic and uncomfortable.  Perhaps they are intended to keep the audience conscious, for orchestras and choirs often work as lullabies rather than performances.  I never noticed the natural protrusions of bones in my back until attempting to settle in hopes of a more restful state.  The lights dim, my eyes train to center stage where risers have been arranged for the coming presentation.  The air feels thick and stifling atop the balcony, like a sauna with invisible steam.  After a short wait, the choir begins its procession onto the risers.  Watching the uniformed black dresses of scratchy cotton moving fluidly into position, I search for her.  Expecting only golden hair slung low to her shoulders as the single familiar characteristic from far up in the highest of seats, my eventual recognition surprises me.  More than her hair identifies her as I gaze.  That stride and the swing of her arms signals a pleasant familiarity.

            Organized, row after row, like a single organism rather than individuals, they stand ready.  The audience is quieting and, though less unified, less professionalized, the viewers appear as another larger being anticipating the coming entertainment.  A motley beast impatient for a muse’s song.  Babble fades to murmur and the murmurs fade to silence.
            And then it begins.  The melody commences at the jump of the conductor’s hands.  The audience watches the choir but I watch her.  And suddenly I am not watching her.  I am with her.  For me, the music hall dissipates into darkness.  Like vision through a tunnel, the choir surrounding her disperses into the depths, but the song remains.  She remains.

            Green replaces the yellow tinged theater.  Sunlight and cool earth make a utopian contrast.  The new breeze undoes the stale and sleepy effects of the stagnant air residing in the upper rows.  A luscious scent from the herbal life mixed with the seasoning of pine tugs me further from that prior must of artificiality.  My seat reclines.  Grass sprouts from the chair and the hard wood crumbles to dirt. My shoulder blades now press comfortably into the natural cushion of earth below.  Rather than watching her from a distance, squinting to see the hints of her features from the balcony, I instead look up to her graceful outline blocking the glare of the sun above.  The dimness is gone.  The stuffiness is gone.  I am gone.  Oblivion. 

Her eyes, grey beneath flecks of varying hues of blue, peer through strands of gold.  A narrowed face of contours perfect in design smiles down at me. Her hair cascades around me like a canopy of amber. First a flowery fragrance, and then a gentle kiss.

            The glimpse suddenly fades as the rhythm of the music changes.  The mid-day park transforms to a hillside trail. Raised outcroppings cast shadows over the dry, scraggly clearing from the sideways light.  But the scene is not hidden, for I can still spy the last switchback leading to a bench.  It occupies a pair staring breathlessly to the west.  They are watching the falling sun emanate the colors of heat, yet the air ebbs towards a coming cold.  The final light cast defines beams of yellow constructed by some distant cloud.  Like doorways to the heavens pulling closed, the sun slips behind the outlined mountains and the rays quickly disappear.  Yet the presence of the couple is that which brings beauty to the scene.  Unlike the fading sun, they choose to remain.  I watch us from a memory.

            Again the vision shifts into obscurity.  The glow of the sun has changed.  Before it was red from the atmosphere, and now it is red from the artificial glass covering.  Two of them identical, appeared from the darkness.  Brake lights intrude on the consistency of night as the car reaches the end of the driveway. A flash of blond, matted from the rain, whips through the dark tinted windows as the car quickly turns and drives out of sight.  And then only I remain.  The wind is harsh and unforgiving.  The raindrops batter the world, and leaves are ripped from their twigs.  Whispers of the fall that could have floated in the tempest are drowned to silence by the sorrow.

            And then, like the others, that scene fades into the depths of my mind as well.  A history remembered blends with the choir rhythm as it begins the crescendo of its final line.  The last dramatic note is belted and then the music ceases as precisely as it had begun.  A moment’s pause and then applause and yet, where have I gone?  Watching not the girl with gold and blue from just the balcony but instead from a memory, I have reminisced.  A concert from the fall before, my mind recalls how I would fade to glimpses from within.  Experiences replaced my high-rise view of the music hall, yet the melody carried through the visions.  Reliving the concert now, my thoughts still wander as they had.  Yet appearing to ignore chronology, my mind brings memories created after the music, tuning them to the choir’s carol.  

            To the present I re-enter, and the story only she and I do know.  And to all else, who in frustration wonder, let them discover for themselves a story of their own.

Back to reality.  Good evening and thank you for the relapse.  I thoroughly enjoyed the sights, sounds, and pain.  Now end it, close it, and be gone.

            It’s gone. 

            4:15 AM

It may be that I only find peace in absolute oblivion.  Amid the nothingness, devoid of that which is petty and that which is meaningful.  Fact and fiction intermingle.  My perceived reality and my imagination blend and it all just fades away.  I fade.  Goodbye.  Goodbye to all you annoyances, to all you ideas and thoughts that I will probably forget.  Take all of your baggage and flee from me.  You too, Thomas Wyatt.  Exit my mind and I will escape from you, you infestation upon my tranquility.

            It is impossible to focus on oblivion.  Oblivion ought to focus on you.  Be stupid and imperceptible and you are lucky enough to fall asleep.  Be smart and you’re the dumbest of them all.  I think I was coming close to oblivion just now but then I tried too hard.

            Oh rid me of insomnia.  Let me be productive when I should be, but not within the depths of the dead hour when everyone else can rest.

            So much for that nearly acquired, enviable, dreamless sleep.  Here comes another needless 4:00 hours of violent unconsciousness.

            Oblivion.  You have betrayed me.  Good night.