Or a Certain Dislocation of Perception
Very recently, a correspondant wrote “curious how we partition Time to try to control it…but it just flows on….”
The more I think on it, the more I realize just how tenuous our grasp on something like time really is. (And how subjective our appreciation of it.) Well, okay. My grasp. Sorry? Yes, of course, my appreciation. As the French say, “Au temps pour moi.”
My admiration knows no bounds for those who manage their time well, who positively exude the impression of mastering the moment, whose time mastering accomplishments are arrayed like certificates on an ego wall or medals on a uniform. My stance is more that of the runner-up, the one who sees the bus pulling away, who wonders how he could have better spent the time that went like small change. (Poor analogy. Small change goes in a jar, I know where it is.)
My dislocation of time is strongest when it shouldn’t be, when I have appointments, flights to catch and promises to keep, and my whole horizon is suddenly woods on a snowy evening where, swept along, I can make no sense of it but am content to drift with whatever’s been set in motion.
Stronger even is arriving in cities by night train, where windows gleam and rush past and I want to reach out and know who all these people are, all those encapsulated lives that suddenly push in and crowd close and are gone. Clickety-clack.
Perhaps that is why I am so attached to making pictures. Each one is a sliver of stopped time. That much time fixed on a page, in a frame, another little bit fished out of that relentless stream and hung up to dry.
You can’t stop it, but you can extract bits of it. Whether gems or beach pebbles, no matter. One’s work is a collection of those.
I guess that’s it, isn’t it? Spending time and having nothing to show for it. That’s why I go to see paintings and art. Anything will do It’s not just pignment and canvas, or chipped and polished marble, It’s time. Same goes for trees. Rocks. Mountains. It’s all time and what’s been kept from it.
But, thinking about it is time-consuming, thus I managed to think myself out of time, with nothing written to show for it.
But, in the absense of anything coherent, and while getting settled down to sit tight and really get some serious work done, here is an interview I did recently. It’s all about the contrappostal aspects of intuitive resilience, mithridatization through proximate agitation, Leonian amalgamation and like subjects. (It seemed to make sense when I wrote it. Go figure.)
