Time is wild. As in foaming, ravenous, stalking you just on the other side of that hedgerow beastie wild. Unless it’s resting, at which point the beastliness tames to that of a curlie-q’d kitten napping in a sunspot.
Any explanatory follow-up to the previous might seem feeble or impotent because if you are the sort that frequently charts your experience with time or remembers when it was that you first fixed on it’s nature that left you one day feeling catapulted forward like a human cannonball past blurred scenery and faces and yet another day as though flowing slowly inward like a single grain of sand shifting towards a footfall, well then, you already know. And though the rate of exchange for time does seem to shift through the years gaining momentum with each lap, the wonder of how it passes and exceptional astonishment at its often seemingly eccentric progression remains unchanged.
Speaking of time, in less than two months I will have been married for 25 years. I mention this because A) and B) how? and C) the peculiarity of finding myself living just a few miles away from the resort we came to for 3 nights of our honeymoon and further that my husband of a coupla’-decades-and-a-half is now employed at that same resort is just all too strange.
You might think that the flow of time on an island would feel less accelerated, marked by sunrise and cloud floats, shuzzle-y sound of palm fronds caressing one another in the breeze and moonlit sea foam, but my experience of time’s passage, on this island anyway, has been otherwise. I wake up early, drive B to work, and *poof, it is 11:00 a.m. Run an errand, speak to my folks, *poof again, it is 4:00 p.m. It is like the time equivalent of the Weeping Angels on Doctor Who (Hey, since the subject is TIME, my gratuitous DW (bestshowinhistoryofuniverse!) mention is apt!), one moment the serene angel statue is way out in the garden by the flowerbeds but turn away for one second or blink and *poof, the angel is several feet closer to you and now in a slightly more threatening pose. (Scary, trust me.) Upon checking the time here all seems normal but then blink for just one second and you have been thrust forward in the day well past any markers that would have alerted you to its passing and another day threatens to end leaving you stunned and unsettled.
Reminds me of when I had a bit of a run-in with heart palpitations a few years back which felt something like having your heart get into an elevator on a high floor and then the cable snaps and in a split second, it hurtles towards the ground floor adapting to the terror of the situation by speeding up and beating wildly. Then the elevator doors open and your heart gets out as though nothing just happened only for the whole episode to repeat itself again at unknown interval. While I myself am game for hang gliding, jetpacks and tardis rides, it would seem my heart is a bit of a fuddy-dud in that department and did not particularly enjoy it.
When I lived in Maui some years ago time there was experienced on a completely different plane. The days seemed to stretch out in gently rhythmic waves like a long boarder leaning in to a peaceful elongated ride.
Though I held 3 jobs there was always time for the beach in the mornings, a late dinner with Bill in the evenings and at the end of the day the promise of entering the realm of sleep and dreams, which were somehow nothing short of magical and profound there.
Minutes leak away from you sometimes in increments so small as to hardly be noticeable, escaping through the lapse between a clocks tick and a dust motes fall through light and space towards portending a heart at rest. This is my memo to myself to stem that leak and notice, savor the motes fall and feel the grace granted with every beat of this heart.