Time Finds Me Too
Words against time
Today I aged a year.
As I say these words they solidify. They solidify into the stream of time. They remain ageless and unmoved. And yet my body turns. Time has its way with me. It saturates life in new hues.
An age that feels real, a true pace to life though I remain the same and different.
I am a collection of former days that have lead to now.
Do these words stop time? I hope so.
Time is a river and memory is a mirror. I use words to see myself, who am I against the word on a page. What does a word whisper through reflective glass?
There are ridges on my nails that weren’t there before, a silver thread weaved into my hair. Today I know more than yesterday. News that weaken my knees. A past that presses up against present. There’s more weight, an existential weight.
I thought I had it under control and then the clock turned from 1 to 2 and forever without infinity.
Tomorrow I will be seventy and yesterday I turned a century. No matter where I look the landscape is moved. I see myself. There are pieces of me scattered.
I try to collect them, they slip between my fingers.
Maybe I’ll rest. Let time do its job and let me do mine.
“I walked into my own book, seeking peace. It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.”
- The House of Incest, Anaïs Nin.
If you want to stop time you might twist and turn in its grasp, but this is of no use. You’ll scratch, and you'll bruise. You must fly into it, a wingless angel until you shatter like glass on concrete. I’m not advising this of course. Instead, consider a glance of your reflection, place a syllable upon it. Let it go, push it away with your breath, and there you will remain. Held completely and entirely in that word. In the mind. You, forever.
So I plait the silver thread into the brunette curls though I don’t forget.
An age is the start and age is the end.
But words remain the same, they remain a comfort. But mostly they remain.
Is this obsession with ageing a narcissistic endeavour - is it the house of incest as Anaïs had described?
Is it wrong to obsess?
What is the use, to make myself the muse?
To reflect is to know the self, see what gazes back. But to stare, to be drawn in unrelentingly, to see nothing else is a curse. A trapping of the mind. An incest of thought. To stop the penetrating of the external entirely. I shattered the glass and discovered more parts of myself. Blood pouring from a gash to my palm drips ruby onto the silver. I already know. I am the self knower.
I try to find the balance of my reflection against a backdrop of slow moving water. I do not wish to remain stagnant but I want the flow to be steady. To wash over me, for the fear of drowning is great, but a splash feels cool and refreshing on my skin.
Reader do you know of this?
Am I alone or do you know the friend, the foe called time.
Time does not care to know me, nor does it care to forget me.
I’m everywhere in memory, I cannot escape myself. Time finds me too. Curled in the corner of a room. Pleading...
