Rolling Rivers, Turning Planets

Time, like an every rolling stream, bears all its sons away. Healing all wounds and wounding all heels, it buries heroes in oblivion and restores the forgotten to their rightful honor. The ancients noted this process and called truth the daughter of time. Should the fancy strike you on a rainy afternoon, you may open the pages of a history book to watch historians chase time’s daughter through the ages. We all bring different equipment on this venture—some carry a guidebook (perhaps the Holy Bible, perhaps the Communist Manifesto, perhaps Virginia Woolf), some march with a patriotic flag upon a stick, some lug a heavy case of scientific instruments with which to quantify humanity. For better or for worse, none of us can look through time without using the spectacles of our presuppositions. One may be surprised by the vehemence with which we assert contrary conclusions from the same evidence, but that is only because our lenses are so very different.
It is such a human impulse to chronicle one’s deeds for the benefit of posterity, and just as human to look to one’s fathers for tales that give identity. Yet the chroniclers and truth-seekers of mankind have not looked at time in the same way. The Greeks, believers in fate, watched a series of epicycles in which mankind repeated itself with the predictability of orbiting planets. Their great Thucydides wrote history in order to foretell the future.
Israel received history from their God, a creator who was not limited to the generation being addressed but who called himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Hebrews stood on a straight path and looked down the line of time to the fulfillment of Yaweh’s purpose. Unlike in the Greek cycle of evolving gods, the Israelite beliefs showed exactly when time had begun. Unlike the Greeks, Hebrews had no need to dread time’s passing and to strive desperately, Achilles-like, for the immortality of an undying name. They trusted that eternity stood outside of time.
Monumental forever, Athens and Jerusalem guided the chroniclers for many years. Then came the Enlightenment and another definition of the world’s aging. Mankind was seen in a great procession of progress from primitive to intermediate to glorious. Each decade of time struck fetters away, crushing ignorance and superstition, until at last freedom from the old faiths (of Jerusalem and even of Athens) led to the liberty of a new utopia. With the irony of a god’s sense of humor, it took only the passing of yet more years to disillusion mankind with its own progress. You will find many historians of today who have returned to either Greek or Hebrew view. Others have lost themselves so thoroughly in the mists of changing eras that they prefer vague confusion and refuse to make the choice. Yet the hill of time, higher than Olympus, still offers a fascinating view. You may stand on the hill, searching for truth, and hope to follow the pointing hand of time’s daughter. (Anna I. Beck)

My Kitty

My kitty wouldn’t wake up today. I was petting him a lot because he was colder than normal, but he didn’t warm up. My parents came in and saw me sitting by the fire, petting my kitty. They smiled. They never smile for long anymore. They told me I should wake up my kitty because he hasn’t eaten. I told them I couldn’t though. They came over to him and nudged him and then stepped back really fast. They stopped smiling. Their voice got louder and they asked what was wrong with me. I told them I didn’t know. They became all fast and sad, and they grabbed my kitty. I didn’t know what to do. So I just sat there, in front of the fire. My parents came back much later and they were crying. I don’t know why, but they cry a lot since I last saw the doctor. My parents told me that my kitty was ok and he was just going back to his family. They told me they would bring me one of my kitty’s brothers or sisters really soon and I shouldn’t be sad. I’m not sad though, if he’s just with his family why should I be sad? Why are my parents so sad?
My parents don’t stop crying now. They talk a lot and hug me a lot and touch my hair a lot but they always cry. They smile whenever they talk but their eyes are so red. They brought me a new kitty. This one’s a girl. She plays with me a lot and I don’t think about my old kitty too much.
I get really tired now. My parents want me to sleep all the time, but I want to play with my new kitty. Sometimes, I sneak out of my room so I can go play with her and Mom yells at me. She yells really loud and then she cries and needs to talk to Dad. I tell her I’m sorry I made her cry and she just cries more. After that though, they bring my kitty to me and sit on my bed and watch my kitty and I play together.
I went to the hospital today. Everyone is really nice here and the nurses tell me lots of jokes. They gave me a cool hair-cut too. They said it was cool. I get all the Jell-O I want and I get to watch funny TV. Sometimes though, I miss my kitty.
My parents are sleeping at the hospital with me. I like that. They talk quietly to each other a lot. I ask them what they are talking about and they don’t say. Mom was looking out the window for a long time. Dad came over to me and told me he had something important to tell me. He said soon I would fall asleep and I wouldn’t wake up. I asked if it was just like my first kitty. He said it was. He said I would be with my old kitty soon and all of his family. I asked him if I would see him and Mom there. He said I would one day. He said I was going to a good place and I would have a lot of fun there. Dad said there wasn’t any school there. He said I shouldn’t be afraid or worry. But if it’s fun why would I be afraid. Why do they keep crying? I told them it would be all right. I would see my old kitty and I liked my old kitty and I don’t like school. I asked him why Mom keeps crying. He said because he and Mom would miss me very much. But they’ll see me again. I keep telling him that. But he shook his head and told me I was a good boy.
My parents brought my new kitty in today. They said it was a special day, but their smiles look so funny. I was so tired though. My kitty kept playing with me but my eyes kept closing. My kitty kept licking my face and my parents kept crying. I just couldn’t kept my eyes open anymore. My kitty kept licking my face and my parents kept crying. But I don’t know why. (Andrew Reher)

A Special Event

Diptych

The falling rain could only barely be heard against the roof. Outside the window he thought he might just see the distant lights of the cars passing on the highway. That road had been his lifeline. When that same highway had brought him here years before, he had been single minded in his ambition and already impatient to leave. He had been younger then.

She had changed that, and now here she was for the last time. Here they were together alone with the rain.

On the mantle above the fireplace had been lain a distant memory, now overturned.

The road, his lifeline, took him away from this place.

_____

Here he was again, and again it was raining as if it had never stopped. Some long-forgotten desire brought him back to the same spot where he had stood that night. The headlights passing slowly below crept by the window in an eternal stream. The ravages of youth had not been kind to him.

A fine coat of dust was all that remained on the mantle where once her image had rested, watching, waiting.

She was not here anymore, nor had she been, in spite of her sincerest efforts. She would not come around here again.

On down the road he went, weary and wet. (Joshua Wilson)

(Untitled)

(Meg O'Keffe)

Jacob Q. Chaconne

Jacob Q. Chaconne strolled down the sidewalk, notes racing through his mind. Chaconne stumbled on a crack, as composer’s block smothered every attempt at a melody he produced. As he lumbered up the staircase to his meager apartment, he was reminded of an ancient Greek love song he once knew. How did that tune go again?
Inside the comfort of his own apartment, Jacob looked desperately for inspiration. He settled into his favorite chair and soaked in the warmth of a splendid performance of Cage’s 4’33”. “Ah, yes,” thought Jacob, “This is the music for me.” He immediately shuffled over to his piano.
The resulting composition for piano and trumpet that was the product of the next few hours was the substance of legend. It contained chords that hadn’t previously existed. They required the use of all ten fingers, as well as three toes and an ear lobe. He invented new dynamic markings like just a little pianissimo, and almost forte. The trumpet was required to play four notes at once in several places. Several phrases lasted over 342 measures. Chaconne’s work was like something no man (or beast) had ever seen.
It was well into the middle of the night by the time Jacob wrote in the final cadence. He was so fatigued from writing the piece that he passed out on top of the piano. His sleep was filled with dancing visions of his piano and trumpet concerto being performed to raving crowds at Carnegie Hall. Who had heard of Bach? Of Mozart or Beethoven? What of Brahms? None could compare to the new master of music: Jacob Q. Chaconne.
The next morning brought sunlight creeping its way onto Jacob’s stubbly face. When it reached the bridge of his nose, Jacob awoke to a muffled German augmented sixth chord being played by his chubby elbows. He came to his senses as he remembered his masterpiece. “Yes! I shall call it-” Before he could finish his sentence, the music that he grasped spontaneously combusted, leaving nothing but carbon as evidence of what would have been the world’s finest musical composition. (Benjamin Simmerman)

4 Rooms

An English professor was always reminding us of time. He said, “When we’re in this classroom, we’re dealing with an artificial situation.” By this, he meant our use of the clock to define when to be here, and when to leave. I always pondered what a genuine, non-artificial situation was supposed to be. Perhaps all situations are artificial, whether we’re in class, driving to appointments, calling friends, or watching television. Appointments cannot be missed, minutes on phones cost money, and problems on television must be solved within an hour or half-hour. One thing did impress me: we ARE governed by time, whether artificial or not.
I was walking with a friend 3 years ago who said she would have liked to take time and put it into a jar. I thought we would be immortals, then, peering into a mortal world, escaping artificiality. I drop a green leaf into that jar and watch it die. My hand would whither with age. The sun would rise and set, all within the jar containing time. Outside that jar, we’d sit, and be immortals, Greek giants passing the jar back and forth for entertainment, watching decaying little people do decaying little things.
Now, the demands we make on each other change our conceptions of time. Today, everyone expects email responses immediately. Globalization induces instant communication—the click of a button, the ring of a cellular phone. The second grows, even as the world shrinks. Once, time really was our ally. And now, we are pushed and harried, falling into the future at the break of yet another artificial day.
Fortunately, time is forgettable. Despite our mortality, and when time occasionally spares us, we still do produce things. We daily leave our thumbprint on a rushing world filled with ticking clocks. We persist in reading and writing. Some of us avoid isolation, ignoring barriers, forcing a lively talk, in a system of taps through prison walls. We hope that the sun will occasionally pause for us. We lose ourselves in history, philosophy, and literature, exploring worlds that stand to multiple explorations. The libraries of the world invite us to forget about time for a while. We hope we may not really someday have to die, and that our growing isolation will crumble into unity when we realize that time is not time unless we feel its passing.
Nevertheless, around the world, 6 billion little clocks are ticking, roughly 80 times a minute, clocks like small homes with four rooms, a limited number of ticks, with a steadfast wind that cannot on this earth be rewound—and what a beautiful, silver alarm bell! (Caleb Sattler)

Only Numbers

Time exists only through numbers. Consider the course of the day. The sun rises and it sets. The moon appears and disappears. These are cycles we witness, just as you inhale and exhale, just as you eat when you are hungry. It is not time but an event, a cycle. Even a life ending in death is an event, an inevitable circumstance. It is another cycle. Yet, an event is not necessarily time passing. There is nothing linear about the repetition of certain events-that is until you count them. Once counted, they cannot stray from the undeniable path of logic to continue onward: 1 to 2, 2 to 3 etc, etc. The cycle is forgotten. It is no longer an event but a number. There are 7 days in a week, 24 hours in a day. How could you explain the length of a week without numbers?
For some reason, we want to know how these cycles are numbered. We want to know numbers which represent our understanding of everyday events. Desperately, we seek to understand our life through any means, so we label, so we number. Even in history, we see the mistakes, the repetition, but attach a worthless timeline to it, a year. What is our fascination with time and the numbers attached to it? Are we so desperate to explain and understand that we need to label it? All day we move with the numbers. We understand, that to be efficient, we must obey their symbols. Forced by time, we must base our actions upon numbers, by a date, a time. We must hurry to class by a series of 3 to 4 numbers separated by a colon. Most students know that in a certain number of weeks or days or perhaps hours, an assignment is due. Carefully weighed and measured, we determine how long it will take. Whether starting a few days in advance or pulling an all-nighter, we make adjustments and decide.
The time is watched. It is carefully monitored. Like a danger approaching us, we wait in apprehension, we wait for the imaginary numbers of time. Eventually, the numbers begin to worry us. Only numbers. Numbers which nag, which whine, which vie for your attention. Coercive numbers which demand millions of slaves to wait in traffic for hours, which demand workers to be on time or be fired, which demand us to wait in a long lines and wonder how much better we could be spending the five, ten, twenty minutes waiting. This is time, the self-inflicted way in which humanity continues to simultaneously organize itself and create chaos. (Andrew Sippie)

Time emission?

emiT.Time. Play withe word,

because we can't play it's meaning.

It's meaning toys with us.

Emitimemitimemitimemitimemitimemitimemitime

Time it. Admitting time?

(Kristen Weber)