Is there a thief about, sneaking in the shadows, snatching months from under our noses as we live our mundane lives? I wonder if the petty stuff is seconds and minutes. Did he start on those and work his way up to days and weeks?
Do the Time thieves break the big-'time' when their confidence prompts them (with a whisper in the ear - Confidence can be sly like that) to move on to months? Do gangs of them plan heists of years, with only the decades reserved for the Mafioso of Time. Don Clock himself. No-one messes with him or his. Hulking in the background, a shadow across the years, taking the decades from the unwary, the wasters, those who squander the precious gift of Moment.
I imagine Don Clock, with the numbers etched across his face like ragged scars, in a bare room. There's a table in the centre. A bare bulb hangs low. Plans and drawings and notes are strewn across the wooden surface. The ultimate prize. Not a century. Not even a millennia. No.
Eternity itself.
But then, is time such a commodity? One that CAN be stolen? That it's precious, I don't deny. That it's squandered, well, I'm guilty of that myself. As I'm guilty of stealing it from so many. But death is my weapon of 'choice'. The Don and his minions and pretenders-to-his-throne don't murder. They let slip the dogs of wear. They slide it from beneath us whilst we have our heads stuck firmly in the television.
If, indeed, Time is such an object.
Is it, instead, a river that we float upon? Sometimes the flow becomes polluted and the worry lines on our foreheads multiply in sympathy. The is no Don. There are no thieves. There's rocks and rapids and the occasional waterfall in our paths that speed it up, causing us to hang on tightly lest we get overturned and drown, but it continues, ever, to the great Eternal Sea.
Perhaps it's neither. It's a being of itself. Monumental. Eternity and immensity blur to become one. Time. It sits and plays chess, like the gods of old, with us as the pieces. No, not chess. A cosmic Angry Birds, flicking each of us into a future we can't see and can barely control.
I don't know.
But January. What happened to January? Christmas was five minutes ago. Now, next Christmas is five minutes hence. Blink, and you'll miss it.
Best get the tree out again.
If they allowed trees in the asylum.
Have you seen Michael Ende's Momo? It's a play written about a young girl who bucks the societal pressure to "save time" in a literal way. Just another take on what you're talking about.
ReplyDelete*wild applause* I was just having this conversation. It's past Valentine's day? Not possible. It isn't even Groundhog's day yet! New Year's was just a few minutes ago, wasn't it? When you find that thief please let me know. He broke into my house as well, and I need that time back!
ReplyDeleteJanuary gave up the ghost. February is the new host. March will rage on until April cries her showers. May's blooms will bow to June.
ReplyDeleteNow it's March already, yikes! The older we get the faster time passes by. When you're on a "downhill slide" every moment counts. Great post! :-)
ReplyDelete