bending_sickle | Anything is possible with Time*

I brought back some transcribed scribbles and newspaper clippings I kept from the undergrad years. Disappearing is one of my favorite stories ever.

Had meeting with Supervisor, met his daughter who's considering joining me in the internship, set up what I've got to do this September, and set a tentative date (Jan. 25) for the flight to Kenya with the two superviros (zomg!).

Watched Heroes 1x01 with Flatmate Laura (we'll be going through the whole shebang, as she's never seen it). Now, off to watch Batman Begins, or as much of it before the zzz.

Time by Elie Wiesel

Time, as we know and experience it, is a part of everything that man does or desires and lends rhythm to his acts and lapses of silence. We create Time and it shapes us; we prolong Time, yet it slips through our fingers: Time is the impossible to define. To grasp it, you must distance yourself from it, yet it penetrates the being until death. Is the Time that governs the body the same which rules the soul? Do both Creator and creature have the same concept of Time and the same dependence on it? Do they have the same attitude to its passage, which perhaps involves going from nothingness to nothingness? […]

Whether that of a child or an old man, existence takes shape in Time – in the future for the former, in the past for the latter. A silver infinity and a yawning receptacle awaiting death, Time carries them on its ebony or gossamer wings toward scrub-covered paths of suffering and memory. Being alive means allowing time to pass through us and leave its mark. It becomes ours to the extent that we associate it with our lives. Bu what happens to Time when the conscience of the being, who knew he is mortal, ceases to exist? […]

Anything is possible with Time; without it or outside of it, nothing is conceivable.

Each of us has a personal relationship with Time. Some of us see it as a foe, others as an ally. It is never the same. Some work with Time, they believe in improving reality. Others work on Time; they construct Time as matter that cannot be slowed down or accelerated.

This is not a question but a challenge. Isn’t man’s goal as he wanders lost through the universe to ensure that his memory continues to transcend Time? Dracula is an alternative to the eternal afterlife in paradise, not one we’re willing to take, but an alternative.

You Deserve Love by Sherwin Tjia
McGill’s Daily’s The Hipless Boy

Everything she wants is in there. And she is out here.

It’s that familiar feeling, entering that luminous ambient heaven. Long shelves of downy sweaters. That dress that could change your life. Those boots that cast everything in that slightly different way. Not being able to afford anything, and being obsessed by the things she saw and touched and felt.

She sits like an inconsolable cat. In her imagination there is always a very romantic, old New York ballroom scene that’s interrupted by violence. She was by turns the villain and the hero. She threw the prom, then sabotaged it, and then saved it at the last possible second before irretrievable disaster.

She looks at herself in the mirror. She sees the daily accumulation of experience on her face, in her eyes. They were eyes that didn’t flinch, and never glossed over. But they blinked often. They blinked at everything. She feels she is getting better and worse at the same time. Her heart is getting bigger, pressing against the walls of her chest. Experiencing the pain of loving more and knowing less. Forgiving herself for falling so fast, for so many.

Every day she does the same thing. She can remember every detail, yet nothing in particular. Bathroom. Dress. Coffee. Breakfast. Bus. Caught between loving the world and leaving it. Seeing the daily atrocities on CNN.com. Letting the ads and the acts wash over her brain. Navigating the impulses of nations. Every child asking you to play with them. Every animal looking up with expectant eyes.

After work yesterday she went to the bookstore and got herself a book. She was just starting into it but already she was immersed. It was the right book at the right time, the way you might ease into a bath, the water as warm as you are. Reading it, the world fell away underneath her. Everything she needed was spun out in front of her. People took on the quality of angels. Everything could be understood and no one overlooked. The secret light of the world peeked out at her. It made her want to dress in fancy gowns and wear flowered hats. To (even with cracked and peeling lips) think to herself, you must kiss first and ask questions later.

Disappearing by Nicholas Hune-Brown
McGill’s The Daily Literary Supplement, February 9, 2004

All over town people are disappearing. In the night-time they are there and then, in the morning, they’re just gone – disappeared. For a while you could see people who weren’t quite disappeared out on the streets. They walked around with parts of them already missing, holes and black patches and parts that were faded and indistinct, like they were being photo-shopped out of existence.

In apartment buildings they are finding little hollow piles of clothing: clean white dress shirts with ties around them crumpled down on top of crisply ironed dress pants; pairs of space pyjamas, tops and bottoms, laid out on bunk beds.

Morgan and I are in my apartment watching the Weather Channel. We have been in here since last month, when they said we weren’t allowed to go outside anymore. No one knows where if comes from or how it works, this disappearing phenomenon. They think it might be something contagious, something like leprosy, something from terrorists, and so no one is allowed to leave their apartment – the doors of the building are sealed. Instead armoured trucks come with groceries. Men in gas masks carry paper bags up to every floor of the building. There is a system. If there is one person in the apartment you are supposed to put a sign that says one. If there are two people you put up a sign that says two, and so on. The men leave the appropriate amount of groceries. It is all very organized.

On the screen the woman is telling us it will be rainy tomorrow. She’s standing in front of a big map of North America that has swirling grey clouds over it. She’s talking about high-pressure zones and Northwesterly winds. She’s talking about the UV index and the five-day forecast. She’s waving her hands over the clouds, pulling and gesturing, and the clouds are swirling and sweeping in the directions she points them as if she controls them. She tells us there will be a high of 16 tomorrow and smiles. She has a smile that exudes a pleasantly banal confidence. The Weather Channel is the only channel we watch now.

It’s funny how quickly you get used to things. When I first came to this city everything seemed so foreign. People seemed slightly larger than normal, grocery stores sold the same food but in different brands. Quickly, though, things cease to be strange and start to take them for granted. It was only yesterday, for example, when Morgan cut her hair down short with the kitchen scissors, that I remembered the way her ears were shaped.

“How do you think she gets to work when no one’s allowed to leave?” Morgan says. We’re watching the Weather Channel again. The woman is wearing a blue dress-suite and says there is a 40 per cent chance of showers.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe she’s sleeping in the studio.”

“Or maybe she’s not there at all. Maybe they’re just showing repeats.”

I think about that for a moment, watching the woman smiling and gesturing. It is a horrifying thought and I do my best to forget it.

We don’t do anything in the apartment anymore. Here is a list of things we don’t do anymore: we don’t listen to music, email our friends, call our parents, watch The Simpsons, order Chinese food, melt Jersey Milks and dip fruit in them, read magazines, tell jokes, rent videos, fight, have sex, cry. We eat cereal, we watch the weather, sometimes we talk. There’s this game we’ve started playing to pass the time. It’s like the games you play on road trips where you choose a category, like famous actors or books, and then you name one and the person after you has to name one that begins with the letter your name ended with. In our game, though, we play without categories and you don’t have to use the other person’s last letter.

“Burlap,” she says.

“Mayhem.”

“Chin.”

“Wax.”

“Dissuade.”

“Wax.”

We play for hours. After a while we start to make up words. It doesn’t seem to matter though, doesn’t really make the game any less fun.

To be honest, I don’t really mind being kept in the apartment. Outside was becoming a nightmare anyway. I don’t even like being in the whole apartment anymore.

“Let’s just stay in my room,” I say.

“Why?”

“I think it’ll be safer if we just stay in my room. Come on, we can more the TV in, bring some groceries too.”

I don’t tell her about my theory. I think that something can’t disappear if you’re watching it all the time. It seems more like a superstition than a theory but what else can you do when people are disappearing? So I watch her.

“Stop being so weird,” she says. She puts down the granola bar she’s eating and stares at me – slack-jawed, bug-eyes, a crude imitation.

“I’m not,” I say, but I keep looking at her.

At night I hold onto Morgan tight.

“Don’t disappear,” I say. I hold onto the sleeves of her shirt and headbutt her in the shoulder.

“Owww,” she says. “Stop it.”

“Don’t disappear,” I say. “Don’t disappear.”

“I’m not going to. Go to sleep.”

We’re lying on our backs in bed. My arm is underneath her neck and we’re both looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. I put them up when I first moved in here, bought sheets and sheets of stickers and covered he place. They aren’t the normal star-shaped stickers – they’re round and much smaller, much more like real stars. They’re in make-believe constellations, clusters and patterns that cover the entire ceiling. They’re most crowded around the light fixture in the middle and that’s where they glow the brightest.

We should probably get out of here if we can. I know this. Outside the night is flat and silent, without any hum of human activity, and it seems like everyday the men in masks are bringing fewer and fewer bags of groceries to the building. In the apartment buildings across the road fewer windows have lights in them each night. It could be that the entire city is disappearing and the only way to keep ourselves whole is to escape it. Soon whole buildings could erase themselves from the skyline, entire neighbourhoods could slide into non-existence.

Outside a truck drives past and for a moment you can see the headlights travelling across the ceiling, making the stars disappear. It’s the only thing making noise on the street – maybe the only thing in the city – and I hear it drive all the way down the road, can still hear it when it’s blocks away.

“What are you thinking about?” Morgan says.

“Don’t disappear,” I say.

She kisses me. “Good night,” she says.

When she falls asleep I stay up listening to her breathe. It is the only sound in the city. There is a terror in being here alone, in being the only one awake. I have to stop myself from waking her up – from nudging her with a knee, from coughing near her ear. My arm is over her and I curl myself around her so that all of us are touching. My nose is in her hair. Her feet are resting on top of my feet. We fit so well. We fit like scallop shells. If anything happens I feel sure I will wake up. I feel sure I will feel the lack of something in my sleep.

Links of the Day:
Blogspot: Fugly Horse of the Day
Addicted to Hate - "the full contents of Exhibit A of the lawsuit filed in Shawnee County District Court in Topeka, Kansas by Jon Michael Bell against Stauffer Communications in June of 1994, Case number 94CV766">
Turkey Whisperer posts leaked spoiler videos for Heroes 3x00
ponderosa121's journal, with NC-17 TDK fanart, such as Magic Trick