To all my friends,
Over the past few months, whilst re-investing in writing (or rather, trying to complete) a book I began three years ago, I’ve been made aware of something hitherto unnoticed…..about time.
I wrote the first draft of this book, ‘being sad, ain’t bad’, in 2015. I can’t really believe that it has remained unfinished until 2018 – that’s three years.
Three years ….
I know we all have a rather ‘fluctuating’ relationship with time – it is never the constant, experientially, that clocks and watches obligingly infer. Our memory of events, even if chronological, will often struggle to accord accurate distance between; some seem so much shorter, some, so much longer.
I never used to worry too much about this capricious nature of time, time flying or time creeping, this was how life steadily passed: inconsistently – but now time has become estranged, as if impregnated with some sort of devious parasite, as if it’s been kidnapped, and blackmailed into presenting itself falsely despite the numbers remaining unchanged. Experientially, it’s become much more unreliable, and capricious beyond comprehension. Minutes, days, months, they’ve all become deliriously variable and subject to extremes of unfounded interpretation; and as for years?
Years, now that I have three to evaluate, are by far the most affected…..
Perhaps this would not matter so, except that years bear so much import ….. much more so than minutes, or days, or months. They have inherently weight, the determinants of periods of historical significance, the building blocks of centuries; they carry expectation, that this year may or may not, be the one; they expel scope, that there is capacity to achieve expectation …..and, once a year passes, inevitably reflection is provoked, which can be imbued with all manner of attendant feelings; everything from pride to regret….
Now that three have passed, my reflections are anything but singular; they are decidedly conflicted. I can’t really make any meaningful sense of these three years. They’ve passed in a blink, and yet I’ve done so much – so they must have been years, therefore, right enough. But I can’t get a grip on the extent of time past, I simply can’t believe it’s been three years. How could one year have passed, let alone three?
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And what expectations might those years have held? For ‘healing’? One might not have been deemed enough, but three? Surely three should have been more than enough?
I knew of course that they wouldn’t be – I’ve always known, from the moment Christopher died, that time would be forever ‘out of joint’. I suppose it’s just strange to discover the tangible truth of this projected knowledge. In some ways it’s a comfort to discover that it is indeed true ….. that the grief both lasts, and changes – and it has indeed changed. Nevertheless, the loss doesn’t – and I think that’s why time is so skewed. The loss is always now, as in: right at that exact moment. I can be back three years in an instant; and then I’m stretched (further and further) forwards again, and it moves always inexorably forwards, forever forwards, regardless, when in fact it should have stopped……and how can that be so?
Because ‘time is out of joint’, and that’s all there is to it…..
I suspect I’m just going to have to let this go – maybe time will resume its familiar capriciousness, maybe not, either way it’s not so bad – in the meantime I’m going to take advantage of the years, of their literal length and make plans. That might be the trick – to simply keep looking forwards and let the past take care of itself.
I don’t like looking back anyway …… too much time has passed …..
Song for these three years: ‘Time’ by David Bowie. What else ….?
Love to all,
Mx