I said I wasn't going to share anything from my last year's notebook but a couple of entries caught my eye, here's one of them that was timed 4.05am. I've tidied and edited it a bit, and added another line to the end.
Time contracts, it closes in on us until we get so close that our measurement of it changes. Life contracts. From a lifespan of ages - childhood, teenage, adulthood, middle age - but no old age, not this time.
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Even taking account of the occasions that time takes a breath in with a luxurious yawn: the first day of a two week holiday for example, with the luxury of time to ourselves before us like a blank page, even that, by the end of the first week starts to shrink into days till home, then the last night, and the final scramble of minutes to get on the plane in time.
We have measured time these last months in the gaps between symptoms and diagnosis, between appointments, and between samples and results. More recently time has contracted to the space between visits - friends, relations, and now, nurses and carers.
Sat in the empty hours of darkness tonight I feel time's weight pressing down, as it contracts once more to conversations - will this be the last one? Then to individual words - 'not yet'.
Finally we measure time in the number of tracks on a CD of brass band music. And then in breaths, just breaths.
And then time sighs, as the aching empty void of the future opens before us.
And yet time then contracts again, only this time to close in gently, slowly, to soothe.
2 comments:
Isn't it funny how one can look back on one's writing and see the words of a stranger. That's not really me!
Funnily enough I've been thinking the same thing for many different reasons as I read the account of that time. I guess in years to come we'll do the same again and again as we grow and change.
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