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This strange, unknown, timeless territory

All my life, that is, the parts I can still recall, I have found myself completely in the dark when it comes to time and its mathematical definition, defined as the ongoing and continuous sequence of events that occur in succession, from the past through the present to the future.

I obviously long since familiarized myself with the concept and its practical use in assigning at least some significance, for it would be an impossible to discuss, very boring existence without it, but time and time again I fail to see any logic in how unstable we observe these precisely defined units, how I can sometimes blink my eyes countlessly in seconds while the next one could take an hour, or worse, weeks.

The website I created in collaboration with my sister, to continuously maintain a public presence of our ‘locked up’ Alzheimering mother, in plain sight for all to see, was titled “Look mama, time’s passing”, as we were very much aware of its essential value on how we perceive disease-like heavinesses and we had immense fun messing with its more profound meaning by creating a navigation throughout the daily updates with labels like ‘always-never never’, ‘tomorrow-without sorrow’, ‘today-yes please’ and ‘yesterday-just about then’.

A lot of the things we worked on for that website, on top of actually being with my lost-in-time-mother eventually freed me from a fear I wasn’t too aware I had, of coloring outside those lines, to not trust too much in finding the logic behind its ticking.

I think of this often now that we find ourselves in this strange, unknown timeless territory filled with Covid regulations and embargoes, we initially embraced wholeheartedly because it disarmed so many involuntary imperatives, but lately Ivory and I have started to bother each other with complaints on how all days look alike and how time flies even without having fun, just as happy, but with a timed side note.

I’ve inherited many valuable insights from my dear mother, as well as all her clocks, including the one from my grandmother, none of which is left allowed to tick because I don’t require an extra spotlight on this eternal passing.
You can stop time, but you should never touch it.


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