Somewhere between cities: A reflection

Time as a mystery

Spoken rendition of “Somewhere between cities”.

---

Photo by Jr Korpa

Themes

We talk about time as if we understand it. This morning, I drank my coffee black. I arrived at work at 8:30 am after sitting in traffic for twenty minutes. At noon, I skipped lunch to get some work done. 2pm is the baby’s naptime. Don’t be late. I’m counting down the days until my vacation on the beach. It has been six years since I saw him.

For something that we believe we understand, the elasticity of time often seems to leave us perplexed. How did summer seem so long when I was a kid, but now each year flies by? When I close my eyes at night, how do seven hours pass that I don’t remember? When did time begin, and how does that question even make sense?

We do not seem to know time at all. All we learn about time we learn from that place of not knowing.

The mysteries of life are not served by exploring what they are. That route brings a false clarity to the mystery and therefore a flawed relationship with it. Mysteries are best pondered by an exploration of what they are not accompanied by an exploration of their traits.

Consider the past or the future, the portions of time where we seem to hold the most angst. If we ask Time, we learn that it does not care about its progression. All it knows is the moment that it is in. Each memory Time provides is a moment recalled right now, and each consideration about the future is a projection of a memory into the present with layers of unseen thought.

The past and the future are a current moment of hallucination. Time is simply the current moment built from every death that is still alive.

Writing Notebook, Somewhere between cities, draft

Process

A writing space is a necessity that offers the body the knowledge that it is time to write. The space does not need a budget or a particular aesthetic. It simply requires an environment where you can feel. I am fortunate to have three main writing spaces in my house.

The first and most often used is my dining room table. I write here for my frequent 30-minute morning sessions that occur before the rest of house begins to stir. It is one of my favorite rooms in our house, with its long black walnut table, a beautiful work of abstract art, and an east facing window that holds a bird feeder that welcomes finches, doves, and cardinals to sing while my mind searches for words as dawn light begins to color the sky from black to blue.

The second is my office. I write here when the rest of the house is bustling. As I work from home a portion of the week, I would not call it an ideal place for my creative drive as my spreadsheet and numbers mind lives there. However, when I write here, I try to physically set the logical brain aside by moving the piles of work into one pile on the edge of the desk, lighting my favorite candle (leather scent, believe it or not) and absorbing the redbud in the front yard through the window view.

The third is the front porch. Over the past ten years, my wife and I have poured a great deal of time and attention into the porch and surrounding front yard to make it a place of retreat where we welcome friends and family into honest conversation, provide a place for our kids to read, and even set the stage for a spring afternoon nap (most often for the dog). I write here often on the weekend as a way to absorb the creative vibes that come from being outside.

But sometimes writing in your place is not an option, and sometimes the creative pull happens in places other than the place you call home. When I travel, I have learned that my poetry notebook is as important to squeeze into by bag as my work laptop and strategic business presentations. Somewhere between cities began to write itself on a short flight between midwestern cities sitting in a window seat. I had been traveling for a few days and instead of catching up on tasks, followed the inspiration that came from flying. It really is a miracle that humans have figured out how to cram 175 people into a metal tube, strap engines of controlled explosions to wings, and launch into the sky navigating safely at 600 miles per hour and landing with no more than a lurch.

I don’t know why the poem wanted to begin with the word “Time”. I was not setting out to explore any particular theme, especially one as ethereal as this concept, but when creative endeavors call to us, all we can really do is follow. The first two stanzas were a direct response to that call, exploring time in the view from the airplane window, then in my analog watch, and finally in my thinking about the work that needed to happen over the next month and the feeling that thought line brought into my body.

The poem then wanted to shift to more conceptual thoughts of time while trying to use striking visuals to immerse a reader into the ideas of time, exploring the feeling of mystery but also the very practical implications it has in our lives.

Finally, a note on punctuation. For those that have followed my writing over the last year, you may have noticed I am a fan of using punctuation to guide the reader into the cadence that I intend. Initially, this poem was written with many commas in each stanza. I decided to drop them all, feeling that to guide someone’s reading flow in a poem about the flux of time was the wrong artistic decision. Therefore, the only punctuation that survived the red pen was the periods at the end of each stanza, creating a visual seperation representing the various stages that time drops into each of our lives.

---

We know a mystery is a mystery when the words we use contradict themselves.

May you embrace the contradictions.

Brian

---

If you missed the original “A Poem” post of Somewhere between cities, I hope you will read and enjoy! You can find it here.

---