trying to run toward time
some ppl fly, some ppl fight. i freeze.
the call
i haven’t felt that i have had much to say. but in the silence you’ve gotten from me, my mind has chattered. endlessly. on a loop. spiraling.
the writer’s duty calls.
an experiment
am i the only one who feels like the world moves so fast that it’s slow? or that things move slowly that they feel fast? why don’t we talk about this more? maybe i need to read more phenomenology, but i don’t think i would even if i needed to. even though morning pages have long helped me find the sweet spot between fast and slow, they have only made me see how at a loss i am. caught between then, now, tomorrow, ten years ago, 6 months from yesterday. between stop and go. no big awakenings, no big slumbers, just peach fuzz in the middle.
it’s warmer now, which means paris is beautiful. in the span of a week, the trees went from bare to lush, and so did the wind.
i kind of stopped drinking coffee, swapping it for barry’s gold and earl grey and mediocre homemade matcha made from ceremonial grade tea. the coffee started to feel like too much to handle.
for a while i have known that i need coffee when life feels fast and it feels like i need something to help me keep up with the pace. it’s not about energy so much as shutting off conflicting voices in my brain. when there’s more meetings and chatting and things to do, it’s a salve for overthinking because the thoughts move too quickly to be over-thought.
tea feels slower. in my effort to cultivate something slower, teas feel more in alignment. admittedly, there’s less ceremony to popping a teabag into yesterday’s mug, and making matcha first thing is more than i can handle (mostly noisy), and that’s all that i miss about morning coffees. i need life to at least feel slower.
my right bluetooth earbud broke a few days after the marathon. couldn’t hear a peep. two hours into the marathon, she started squelching, even after i dried her off with my shirt and cleared out earwax and sweat. i don’t want to say it was why i was 90 minutes off of my goal time (the left glute instability was the culprit), but it certainly made everything, including the passage of time, more agonizing. squilch left foot squilch left foot. i ran in silence for 4 miles because i couldn’t take it.
time passes quickly when you’re not hyperfixated on the problems you can’t control: the hip, the earbuds, the afternoon sun, the uphill at kilometer 39ish, the endless metro stairs, the end. and yet i want life to feel slow??
i feel like im running out of time.
how do i run toward time?
i booked travel home to the US, and the 2 months in front of me feel like an infinite tomorrow. plenty of time to do what i want to do, but still not enough. when will it ever be enough? the fact of time shrinking also means that it’s expanding elsewhere, surely. the longue durée is getting shorter, but it means the days have room to feel longer and lengthen around the edges, just as the sunrise and sunset press towards its outermost limits.
but the decision fatigue is back: what do i do: write, read, edit, email? when do i do it? where do i go: coffee shop, home, library? the public city library or the national library? which cafe? which archive? do i sit on the metro for an hour round trip so i can work more efficiently elsewhere in a shorter span of time, or do i luxuriate in the slowness and the distraction-rich zone of home? do i wake up early or stay up late (or maybe i could both with coffee)?
running toward time maybe means confronting it head-on, face first, all-in. perhaps it means seeing time as water: kind of everywhere, and can occupy space differently depending on its state of matter. when it freezes to a solid state, eventually it melts and moves more fluidly again. water is a sticky liquid, and so it clings to itself. like attracts like. occasionally time stops and we are caught up in it, either letting ourselves pause in that glacial stillness or feeling suffocated by the ice cube tray.
(maybe we ARE time. maybe we don’t live IN time. but if that’s true, why do i feel like im living out of time? like im running out of time?
am i running out of ME?)
once the water gets moving again, it moves on to become the clouds that carve themselves into the sky. sometimes time evaporates only to leave small traces between your fingertips, the way that sweat leaves a salty tinge on your skin. it can feel like the sock in the armful of laundry that drops out from between your pinky and ring fingers: fallen and hardly noticed until you need that goddamned sock. or sometimes it’s a reminder to replenish; it’s a time to recognize that rain will reappear.
water, like time, has a central state of movement. i tried my morning pages again today and tripped on a re-realization that i have been praised and celebrated for the fact i am flexible for other people, that i am resilient when it comes to molding my actions to accommodate others, that i could bend under the slightest pressure and still not quite crumble. i moved when others needed me to.
and yet when i have needed myself to move, i cannot. the fast and the slow traps me again, and the ice cube tray is back.
answering the call
to run toward time is to dare to run at all.
to run toward time is to find a place of steady movement because time is moving all the time anyway, and as beings full of time we owe it to ourselves and the universe and the planet and to the leaves of the olive tree to be there with it. in it? with-in it?
it doesn’t matter if everything around us moves faster than we can, or if we are ahead of schedule. to move at all is to be in time.
author’s note
thank you for indulging in this week’s experiment.
i have been reading several amazing novels and listening to new album releases, all of which i think triggered what has felt like a mini crisis of identity, thought, etc. this is not to mention that i am deeply a fall and winter girly, and i have always struggled as the days get longer. running the race has really felt like an ending, and i don’t know where i’m going next. it’s been a strange april.
all of this is to say: i’m overdue for a reading round-up. a marathon recap is also in the works. and im going to kick off may with one of my more vulnerable dissertation diaries. so if you are interested in any of those bits to come, and seeing other phases of this strange journey, make sure that you’re subscribed. you are also always welcome to upgrade or grab a warm beverage anytime you like!
it really means so much to have you here in the weeds with me 😊🌿💚
the stream of conscious, abolishment of capitalisation, the deliciousness of these words, it is all just magic to me.
Love reading your words as always, Cana! Definitely relate to the feeling of having those tickets booked and knowing you're leaving and having all the time and none of the time. I feel like I'm always on that path, too, not matter where I am 😂💜