During the last few years of her life, my mother did not know the time, the day, the month, the season, the year, or the name of the town where she lived. She just lived. She liked music. She liked flowers. She liked apple juice. She did not like pain. Now, I know what time it is. But I do not know what time is. I like rain. At […]
On the road, the notion of time evaporates so quickly, I have to stop and think to know what day it is, and even then I’m not quite sure. A minute, mile, or hour farther on, the fact is gone again, along with its meaning and its need. We left on Monday. That much I know. But I hardly prize the information. If today is Thursday, the name is the […]
Time? How can I define it if I don’t know what or where it is? And yet all my life, I’ve casually and confidently used the word itself. Very well — but I must never make it my defense or my excuse. Little children — all of the rocks in the avalanche have names. Their meanings will come, by and by, brought by butterflies and babbling brooks. August 2, 2019
Clocks are a great human tragedy. A faithful sun, enough for the rest of creation, is not enough for us. Imagine a play in which all of the actors carry clocks — through love scenes and in displays of assumed moral courage, both hands occupied, fingers absentmindedly caressing the worn shells of those insistent, demanding objects as if they were pampered pets — while the audience nervously taps its feet […]
There are all sorts of love letters in this world. This world is a love letter. Great Gray Granite Well, I just can’t help it. I love being so old that no one knows how young I am — except for you, of course — you’ve known all along, since long before either of us was born. I was a rock — a great gray granite slab. Do you […]
I remember working on a story once for eight days, with the steadily growing realization that it was bad. But I stayed with it, and when the story was finally done, it was even worse than I’d thought. Eight days. Hours and hours. Time spent. Pages and pages, into the bin. It was grand.
Canvas 1,227 — November 3, 2018
In the same letter, the friend who told me about the Gombrowicz diary mentioned seeing deer in the quieter, more secluded areas of the campus of the college where he works, and how those lovely creatures live in their own version of time. He meant it in a philosophical way, but it’s also true in the scientific sense. Every species on earth experiences time differently than we do, and sees […]
It’s that almost in the last verse that stops me. Without it, the poem would be entirely different. As for the truth of the two possibilities, it might be best to dwell on it, or in it, for a century or two; because, as one’s understanding of pain changes, one’s notion of time does as well. In fact, we might come to realize that it doesn’t exist at all. […]
