frozen in time

TIME IS A BIRD once caged flying in haste towards the horizon it will never reach. It runs so fast that to its eyes, everything moves so slowly. Most people try to chase it. Those persistent enough are successful to catch it. Some fail, but try again. But there are those who get tired and decide to walk, who eventually sit down and just let time pass them by. Today, I am one of them.

To most people, time is the one that wades through us. Only few believe that it is us that walk through time. If this is true then time shouldn’t be a problem. There would be no such thing as too late or lost time. If time stretches in front of us, then we just have to choose the way how to walk through it. One could choose to walk, run, or crawl. If we’re the ones that wade through time, then we are ones in control of it, not the other way around. But still, we tend to blame time for everything that we miss because we find it inconvenient to blame ourselves.

I sometimes imagine that time is a line or a path that we all take, extending from both ends, front and back, stretching endlessly. But when dealing with time, there is no such thing as return or reverse—a one way street. The points in the line we have already traversed just become part of our personal histories which eventually turn into just mere memories—silent photographs, faded and old. There is no stepping back, just moving forward, but only limited to the present, which we have to take one step at a time before we could get to the future. The past is once a present, which is a future to the past. But the present is past to the future—the only space in time were we could make a difference for what’s to come.

Everything ends, like time, at least here in the physical world. The lines will end. We will soon run out of solid ground to walk on to because life is bound to end like lines differing in lengths. They may run in parallels but they are not always congruent. But what really matters is what we do to those lines that overlap with ours and those who walk through them…before lines run out; before our time run out.

This day I choose to kill time. There are lots of ways to do this. My way is probably the lamest but it doesn’t matter. This day I choose to stop. No running. No walking. No Crawling. You can imagine me laying my back on a withered bench along an empty street; ears plugged with music—an attempt to shut everything out, which is successful, I think, for I can no longer hear the rustling of leaves and the knocks of anger waiting at my heart’s doorstep. The sky hangs above me carrying a promise of rain, murky and gray. I watch as the clouds churn, moving swiftly to where the wind rules them. Moist air cools my spirit; a balm to my troubled soul. May it carry my prayers to the high places where it could finally be heard and bear answers.

An unkindness of ravens fly by. Pairs of wings stretched, struggling against the wailing winds. And once again, I am reminded of how time flies, wondering what else I am missing. As I fail to shut out the truth that there is no turning back, I gaze upon the vast expanse of heaven while waiting for the first drops of cold rain on my face. This is the way I choose to kill time. But it can’t be killed. It just lay there instead, frozen beside me and along everything else that wishes the world to stop.

My time has run out…