Time is a great enemy. My nemesis in fact. That is a certainty in my mind backed by the full force of any man’s capability to have faith in fact. Time creeps up from behind, without warning. If one accepts that the fleet-footedness of the time conscious places you but merely a moment ahead of the minute hand – then time, always, creeps on you.
As I write its ten to two.
The hour hand is reaching at 2 and the minute hand obscures 10. Together they look like wide open jaws. With every second they’re closing, biting down and consuming the twenty minutes that will bring the jaws to a satisfied gulp at ten past two. My time consciousness stands at somewhere in between, hovering around twelve – wondering what happened to that hour. I’m like some unfortunate rodent caught in the death snare of a serpent’s bite, the two of us caught in a never ending circle. There’s no way out, we’re doomed to re-enact a process of flight and consumption by the clock’s hands, ten past the hour, every hour, and what are we reduced to – a spectacle akin to feeding time at the zoo.
Every sixty moments the second hand passes by, caressing me as though some slavering tongue moistening a morsel for consumption driving home the impending lesson – soon. Soon it will be ten past two, and I’ll be lost in the expanse of that hour, from my vantage point in the gullet, looking down at the lonely number six. Till the minute hand passes six what play’s out is some long digestive yawn, until eventually the hand passes by – dislocates somewhere near 7 and within five minutes is at eight, back to being jaw-like and ready to eat up the residual minutes all the way to the next ten-past.
It continues. Time. Doesn’t end, and if we thought about it a bit too much we might suddenly realise the sobering thought that ten past three on Saturday, this very second, will never, ever happen again. A lifetime is contained in that second what did you do to fill it up? Complain? Pray? Orgasm? Before you can think back another bundle of moments encased in the unforgiving exterior of a second have passed on, died, forever – never to be resurrected – to put quite simply, gone.
I’ve read of the great warriors in ancient times from the land of Hanibalia, whose King awoke from slumber one morning to the news that Romans were coming from across the sea on their speedy ships, well armed and thirsting for conquest. The King was informed that to raise all his mighty armies, to well-stock and fortify his capital, to call upon his allies and vassals to come to his aid, required time, and time was one thing he didn’t have. The Romans would be upon him before the first army could be raised, or field, harvest, or even the fastest horseman could arrive.
Time was his enemy.
The King concluded that time was in league with the Romans. He ordered every sun dial destroyed, so that the hour of the Roman’s arrival be unknown, and all the wise men and philosophers who could count the moments be killed. History was not to recall the date of the kingdom’s destruction. Then the great King ordered what few men he could assemble to buckle their belts, shoulder their shields to their sides, unsheathe their swords and at their head he marched out to find and battle the Roman’s great ally; time.
The fate of Hanibalia is unknown. The Romans came, they saw, they conquered – no trace of the city exists to speak of, and no knowledge of what became of it. And of the King and his army, we know even less. They marched out across the distant sands to battle with the legions of clocks that are Time’s army and were never seen again. We can assume the Hanibalian’s failed, the clocks still turn.
Time will tell their fate.
A clock behind me is chiming, its approaching half-past the hour. Oh dear reader, how I would have loved to elaborate on time, mused upon its constant caress, written at length of all what the great sages have said on the subject.
But the clock is ticking, a day is progressing and time remains an enemy, with which in the course of the few short hours left of Saturday a battle must be thought if all that is to be done, is done.
I leave you with a riddle that has plagued me ever since I stumbled upon it’s discovery: “How does a man who is waling overtake, a man who is running?”
The clue lies somewhere in this blog.
