How long is now?

We are made of memories. From a place outside of time that marks our lives and our experiences. Our clocks tick to different rhythms and authorizing ourselves to follow our own compass is perhaps one of thegreat pursuits of the human experience. When I was little my family used to go on road trips a lot (very long road trips) sitting in the back of the car while entertaining myself with watching the shapes forming by the clouds, writing little poems and sulking with my brother, the question I asked the most to my parents was“How much time is left?” When my mom would respond it was like it reseted me, internally. I didn't know what one, two, six hours represented in the world's time. On the clock. I think when asking the question repeatedly, what I really wanted to know was: how do I sustain this waiting? Sustain what is missing, thedisplacement, the crossing to some place I didn’t know about. How do I sustain, inside a car, inside my body the anticipation, curiosity, fear and expectation? I think children inquiry tirelessly how much time is left because it’s in the interval between what is and what is missing that they gradually begin to find themselves. In the time outside of time.

I keep thinking about when we lost the ability to sustain this in-between? Amidst the time missing and the time of now and the past. How to fill this in-between is somehow an attempt to try to move to a time that is not particular to either one of us. A time that is in a hurry, where bills have to be paid and goals need to be achieved. It's as if we were compressing this in-between to place it within a collective time that is not well, is sick and going too fast. Maybe that's why we either feel we are wasting time or stuck in time, perhaps that’s why it's so difficult to go through thetransitions, the in-between because we insist on putting this period inside the world’s clock and it doesn't fit. The poet Paul Valery has a very visual quote that says, “We are entering in the future backwards”. When I think back to the little girl asking how much time is left, I try to remember that I too, now, want to know how I can sustain my experience outside of time, how this in-between is where I constantly lose and find myself.

With love,
Mari