Today I am Writing: On Conceptualization of Time

I've been trying to write, you know.

It has been going well/not-so-well.

Today I finally hit my groove at 3 p.m., approximately 6 hours later than I meant to.

But those 6 hours? MONUMENTALLY IMPORTANT.

I just realized.

It's the navigation of Time and timing that I find difficult, the trusting that there is this Place within which you are sitting that cannot be moved and cannot be negated. You have it: Time.

But the use of that Time, the timing of the Time, sometimes feels fuzzy to me. I wake up from a good night's sleep, roll over to remove the eye-mask that keeps me resting with some longevity, notice the it-is-summer-and-up-before-me sun with a good long intake of breath and stretch of my long arms, and then sheer and utter panic sets in. It's a day in which I will need to navigate Time and timing!

I'm a mess, I tell you. A mess.

But I am learning, and it's the children, actually, who are helping me to learn.

The Time which I have set aside this week has been to write about time, oddly enough. To consider the ways that I have seen children conceptualize it, roll around in it, use it or not use it. We assume (with our rather arrogant adult assumptions) that children are terrible managers of time, but watch a child. Nobody manages Time better than a child.

Children conceive of Time with four little mechanisms I like to call the Quick Transition, the Lengthy Participation, the Story Arc, and--drum roll please!--the Cycle of Memory. 

Here, a very brief lesson, for those of you wondering:

The Quick Transition, a.k.a. the flit-from-thing-to-thing
The Lengthy Participation, a.k.a. no matter who you are or what bribe you are employing, you cannot get that child away from that thing
The Story Arc, a.k.a. when the child is driving you crazy because he is quick-transitioning like a little madman and you think all order has been lost and society is going to the bats, and then you realize the child has been working on the same main thing for all this time, and it was only you who couldn't see it
The Cycle of Memory, a.k.a. when the child quickly transitions to some thing you and he created four months ago, as if no time has gone by a'tall, and is disgruntled to find you have absolutely no recollection of it

Now, back to me.

Today, I hit my groove at 3 p.m., my Lengthy Participation moment where I sat at my desk and bled brilliance.

And it wasn't until I took a little ruminate-on-the-toilet break that I realized how much those children had to offer me. I realized for the first time that the 6 infuriating hours leading up to the Lengthy Participation moment I had been aiming for all day had been my Quick Transition period, where I flitted from my desk to the kitchen to my desk to the post-office, completely unaware--in my adult assumptiveness--that I was actually engaging in a Story Arc.

My it-is-morning panic reflects this belief that I have to find my Story Arc all over again, that it got lost somewhere in the nether-lands beyond my eye-mask, and good luck is all that's left me.

Somebody really should just call me up once in a while, and remind me: If once I was a child, then I have a cycle of memory too. And I am not nearly as much of a mess as I think I might be.

If I think I have time, I will answer.