~a column by Colleen O’Brien
The final week in July doesn’t signify anything, as far as I could find out from Mrs. Google: it’s not Jello Week or “Let’s Celebrate Hopscotch Week.” But, I know the last days of July signify the sun change — we can now tell that the days getting shorter by the minute even as the heat index rises. Next week is August, which is the beginning of the end. Soon it will be football practice and then school and then walking gingerly along icy sidewalks under empty trees in our weighty ensembles of hats, scarves, coats, gloves, long underwear and boots.
On my morning walk I saw my first “autumn” leaves leaving their tree, a white maple at the beginning of its fall in the middle school front yard. The sight of these first leaves lying on the deep green lawn is perennially shocking, coming so soon each summer. The trees have just fully leafed out, overarching our streets and sidewalks, shading our homes, housing our songbirds and cicadas. Too fast the clock is movin’ and I’m already nostalgic for the summer that hasn’t yet fled.
When I was 9 and my dad told me that time would go faster the older I got, I looked forward to this happening. As far as I could see, it took forever for my birthday and Christmas to come, for school to let out, for church to be over. I was ready for the speeding clock. But of course, now that the hour hand is as fast as the second hand, I am horrified. Where does time go? Is it in safekeeping somewhere, like in Heaven or something? How can it be the middle of the year 2015? Has a mistake been made? Am I dreaming?
I want summer to be at least as long as winter. I would prefer that lilacs, peonies, tulips and daffodils last longer than a week and my dentist appointment not come around so quickly. I would like that the many decades I’ve lived were halved and I had them — well, some of them — all to do over again, slowly, with pleasure instead of worry, with a little more dancing and a little less writing somebody else’s stories.
The construct of time, the business of clocks and wristwatches and bell towers rounding up the fleeing minutes and tick tocking away so we are kept aware of this patrolling of time — no wonder we’re all stressed. There is a tribe in the rainforest of South America called the Trobrianders who are unaware of the concept of linear time. From what I understand, they dig up a yam when hungry, play and relax and laugh most of the time and sleep when they’re tired. We call them a “subsistence” culture, and we pity them; but they have a lot more family time than we do. They are of course not Calvinists, so they don’t feel guilty if they’re not doing anything. I have a theory that time and Calvinism have been in cahoots for way too long here in Western Civ. But I see no way out. We made up time as something outside of us that defines us, chained ourselves to it, and we are now its slaves. Dumb.
I understand that we all die, that there is a progression from birth to death, that if we’re lucky there are many moons between when we appear on this planet and when we disappear. But, still, a little more Zen, a little less 40-hour week, not so much scheduling, a cap on to-ing and fro-ing? It probably wouldn’t work, for we are humans, after all, a strange animal intent on worrying about what comes next. Most human tribes on this planet are not into making it simple.
Thus, time . . . kept, clocked, checked, allotted, fleeting, wasted, hurried, used up, saved, lost. We think we’re important if we have a lot to do, as if time is of the essence. And it is. But we now cannot operate without attending to it, we can’t get away from keeping an eye on it . . . more’s the pity.
