Bubble-gum Tate

I am reacquainting myself with time.

First, two abiding images:

1. Already mentioned, but: my long bathroom breaks in sixth grade, taken languidly in order to prolong the time outside of that classroom and away from that particular teacher. To get a much-needed break. I would remind myself, every time, that this was temporary, and that even though it seemed like it was going on and on forever, that it wasn't, and that eventually this class would end. And eventually, I would be going home. Tonight I would be home, not here. This will end. This will end. This is temporary.

I mention this again because this seems like a fairly poignant example of my understanding of time. We perceive it slows and quickens buy wide margins, when in fact measurable time remains the same. Time -- that is, clock-time, the time the Western world is a slave to -- is a learnable fact. Sixty seconds to the minute, sixty minutes to the hour, twelve hours to the day, and so on. We learn to ignore the sun and instead partition moments by the clock*.

2. Around the same time I was Struggling with many things in my brain, I was asked to be a character in a short film. A vaugely popular, vaulgey nerdy, mostly self-involved acquaintance was getting shots for a short film. (This was not unusual, he did many films for the morning announcements we played on closed-circuit TV, and his particular contributions often involved him as a Matrix-type character.) He had already filmed himself leaving the building and running across the parking lot, in his Matrix-get up. I may have been in white that day actually, but I can't remember. I do remember I was handy, sitting right there on the stairs like I always did during first block. And of course, I wasn't "normal" so I wouldn't get all self-conscious about this sort of thing. He asked if I would say a line for him. The line was "Time is man-made." I never asked him to explain that, or ask his understanding of time** (obviously this clashed heavily with my sanity-saver line just previous there,) but I just said the line for him, he shot it a few times, and that was it. I never saw the clip and I don't know if they ever used it for the announcements because I never caught them senior year, being out in the hallway and everything.

I began to think more about time as I got into second semester and started the comparative religion class, wherein I was introduced to the concept (more like the term) cyclical time, vs. linear time. I didn't spend much time thinking about it, I mostly remember thinking, yup. Cyclical makes sense.

I never really knew what to make of time, actually. I asked myself many times, and asked what it was I thought time -- non-clock time -- was, particularly around the time I was asked to say "time is man-made," because while certain time was certainly, I was not convinced Any And All Time was. Celestial time? Archaeological time? The time we felt vs. the time that was expressed by a clock? Surely this was too complex a thing to waft aside with a hand, time is man-made, and write-off as some foolish thing civilization does with people. But in true me-form, and because I was far too busy dealing with more important aspects of my mind, I left it soundly unresolved. Instead, I tended to do what I think many people do: I defined time by what I did.

"Deadline time is a jarring of the sleeping pattern and being unsure where my rings are. It's emergency trips to the store for one pencil, or to Safeway for orange juice and diet dr. pepper. The cans accumulate. And we're beginning to run out of teacups.

It's sketchbooks and spirals with sentence fragments; ideas littering the floor around me in a semicircle. The two tackle boxes are ajar. Media are arranged by color, dark to light, in small piles within reach. blank CD cases are ripped apart and smothered. Any unused hard plastic surface becomes a pallet.

Paint in bouts of 15 minutes. Eat while the brushes are drying.

It's Bela Fleck marathons, all of the Five Iron Frenzy albums. Anything that I'll listen to all the way through, thus avoiding the obligation of stopping everything to skip a song. It's the "Tolkein" pants and dozens of candles. Dirty fingernails. Yet another spot on the carpet; sheepishly hidden by something that is drying.

As always, I am completely unwilling to taint my coffee with cream.

The Hamper lid doubles as a tabletop. Drawings are portable. A dent forms on my right middle finger, and I become immune to the subtle squeak of the hand sharpener. But never to charcoal. Hygiene becomes irrelevant. A disregard for contacts. My mind is on repeat, trying and hold onto what I was thinking when this particular idea arose. Things get stranger. Things either evolve into personal brilliance or fail completely. My cell phone is dead in a coat pocket somewhere.

I think I have two days to go." [Feb. 2, 2005]

This is a slight expansion of something I briefly mentioned before. No longer is my life a pause, the rush to prepare, then classes -- increments of forty-five minutes or an hour, repeat, repeat, home, work hard to finish things we don't want to, stay up late, repeat, repeat, big test, and..that was the worst thing I've endured!

Repeat.
Repeat.

It's not even the same, with a job. (Four hours. Pull in steady, settle in, log in and answer voice mail check the fax machine, settle in, answer email, print today's work and file, do all the work and file, build the template, break, build the template, public trustees, and go.) It's nothing. No school, no job.

I am trying not to settle too soundly into this, because I don't want to be unhappy when I start working again. I don't want this period of stasis to last long. But at the same time I cannot function unless I have some sort of routine.

I have always been a stickler for routines. (Am I repeating? Stop me if you've heard this one.) One of the earliest stories told about me is when I was very small (pre-memory) and we were visiting Aunt Early in Florida. I was walking around sobbing at 5pm because I hadn't picked up my toys. Mom had to gently concede that it's alright, it's vacation. Aunt Early, who had when worried about my visit because she didn't want me breaking things, decided that my breaking something was not even a remote possibility.

I still remember a lot of the childhood routine. Grocery store on Monday. Library (for story-time, three new books, picnic at the park and a walk around the duck pond,) on Tuesday. After walks I always wanted ice water and apple slices -- partly because it was the coldest thing I could think of, but also because we always had that after walks.

So I am a lover of spontaneity who thrives with routine. I like to think of it as having a good reference to occasionally ignore. And I am trying to figure out, in this new place both in physical location and mental state, what that could mean.

I have lost great gaps of time. I have wandered in the neighborhood in my elongated evening-hours without having the slightest idea what time it is. I go through entire days not knowing. I will then have days where I watch time very closely to catch a certain bus or hit a certain store at a certain time. I cook something until a specific time, when I will need to stir in more things. And within this there is some sense of urgency -- I need to try and do these things before this time -- but there is also a sense of relaxation that I have not felt in a long time. I am still realizing that this doesn't need to end come fall. But what does need to happen is something far more complex, something that can hopefully fill in the cracks once the job is found. (Or once someone pays me millions of moneys to sit around and draw).

What works for me is this: Wake up and have coffee, and breakfest. Sit and read, or laptop. Start doing something. Have tea. Have a break for lunch. Maybe nap. Have tea. Think about dinner, and if necessary walk to the market for an onion or more garlic. Make dinner, eat dinner. Go for a long walk. Maybe do something, maybe with a glass of wine. Sleep.

Repeat.

That seems to suit me fine.

*The need to partition off time is something else I am of two minds of.

1. On the one hand, I am terrible at working on any sort of long project -- even if its something I enjoy -- unless I know there is an end to my toil, a break in sight. I can't just say well i'll take a break when I'm tired, because I will never go back to work again.

2. On the other hand, the very best things in life are the moments you can appreciate for themselves, the moments you can recognize as full, no matter how long or short. And sectioning off certain times as eating time and certain times and play time is inherently restrictive.

**This guy was yet another guy who kind of thought himself to be pretty shrewd and with it, more so than he actually was. It was from him that I first heard the sentiment, "If you are happy, you aren't paying attention." He actually took it a step further and inferred that happy people were just not smart enough to understand the Great Suffering Of Man. Or something. And I remember thinking, oh. Oh how wrong you are.