Second Wind

It's all relative.

I’ve been thinking about time lately. I should have “more of it” but it doesn’t feel that way. In truth you can’t have more time. Time just is. You can’t make it or reduce it. Time doesn’t care about your to do list. It happens regardless of you. We’re just observers/experiencers/voyageurs. We are in time but can’t change it yet doesn’t Einstein’s Relativity say we can all experience time differently? Or at least our perception of it. Clearly I am not a student of Einsteinian physics but I am thinking about my perception of time.

The Egyptians may have been the first to divide time into twelve. They noticed a year had twelve lunar cycles which led to twelve months, of 30 days each (they knew the year was longer than 360 days but like an eager junior designer were more keen on the integrity of it all). Wanting to divide the day into equal halves, they assigned twelve hours to daylight and twelve hours to night time. To make their system work seasonally they simply made an hour longer in the winter to accommodate longer nights rather than mess with the balance and beauty of twelve. After the French Revolution, when the French created the metric system, they even tried to change time keeping from a duodecimal (base twelve system) to a decimal system (base ten). It failed. There is only so far a salmon can swim against the current before it dies.

Did we conquer time or did time conquer us? I’m with the latter. Though I suppose with electric light we can fool ourselves into extending our waking day into the night. The solstice has just passed meaning the longest day is behind us and the days are already growing shorter. That is an odd phrase: to grow shorter. It is also cruel. It means summer begins by shrinking towards winter. Our days will contract for six months before they expand again. The Egyptians had it wrong but it was a valiant effort to bring simplicity to the complexity of time.

There are times, perhaps under the influence of a particular herb, when time becomes wonderfully playful. It contracts and dilates in the same way the wind serenades the trees and hurries the clouds. Moments pass slowly but quickly become another. The expansions are quiet and still and the compressions whisk you to another moment. Asking, “How did I get here?”, is like being caught up in a gentle eddy. Wasn’t I just doing something? I’m folding a shirt with gestures of a conductor in slow motion. Now I’m looking out at the night sky. Noticing the slip of clouds lit from beneath by the city. Folding the clothing felt like an hour ago but look, the jeans I needed to fold are still in my hands.

During such times, simple tasks can become very deliberate, mannered and observed. Look at how I folded this sweater. It’s so tidy and precise and it gives me so much pleasure to see this little labour appear so well done, and artfully composed. Now I’m wrapping one arm beneath the legs of these jeans and one above like a geisha’s sleeve during a tea ceremony. The jeans are folded so well they could have just been taken from a store shelf. Now I’m looking at my face and remembering I’m brushing my teeth. It’s taking so long. How is this happening for so long? It can’t be much longer… it’s done. Spit. Rinse. Looking at my eyebrows closely in the mirror. For a long time. Seeing the white hairs trying to hide in the back.

Now I’m thinking. I’m thinking that I like that idea. The idea that time is like the wind. It can flow leisurely, or violently as in a storm or still and unmoving like a calm dusk lit summer evening. We’re pushed through time like a small sailboat. I like the idea of the wind serenading the trees, and carrying the clouds like a mother ushering a child to bed. Time is like the wind, though it only moves in one direction. Maybe we can slow it down just a little. Einstein said so.