Time

Time…

it runs and stills, flows and stagnates, bubbles and warps

Time that rushes with aging, like the sand clock about to “run out”.

Time that slows in boredom — the parallel play between “el tic tic del reloj” and the swaying of wind-dancing trees in the storm that said “no” to engaging in the outdoor picnic today. Their rhythm not quite like the feet of intimate dancers to a bachata playing in the background.

Time that is redefined through capitalist language as “wasted” or “saved,” captured in light as a satellite interacting with a horizon, modeled through movement, crip-imagined through disabled body-minds, redefined through progressive and end-stage diagnoses, counted, left uncounted, survived through incarceration…

… as it is given in exchange for connection, for clarification, for evolution of ourselves in community.

The matrix that shapes us into rocking chairs, holding cyclical waiting and surrendering to: the newborn animal seeking nourishment on-demand, the blinking eyes of the loved one who has succumbed to a liminal unknown between our defined lines of illness and health.

It’s “-lessness” as its essence floats in energetic currents and braided in ephemeral fragility in a breath.

What quantification of time hides in our shuffling steps, as we find ourselves in the dreadfulness of yet another routine train that arrives “late” or when we regard ourselves “the early worm”?

How is time measured when it dances in wandering strides, or as it giggles in the pitter-patter of toddler explorations?

That.constant.NY.rush

And when it is a feature to characterize linguistic standardization — the delayed, the late, the simultaneous and the sequential — where are the lines that define us as separate from “the other”?

Time speculates about futures to be lived, or about beginnings that may never begin. Be it a mix of thrill and fear as it brings upon the end of sunlight and the blanket of darkness in our unknown wooded paths.

Time seems to halt when loss overwhelms.

And yet, time, too, can and does heal, if you give it time.

previously posted on medium.com