The Time-Keeper
I let acedia take over for the summer, let it slip over me like a warm bath. I wrote about it before, shortly before I left, the silencing, the tightening up in my throat, until I realized I had nothing to say. Or I did, but it became too exhausting to say it. Too exhausting to even think of the process of saying it. But it is winter now, or so it likes to play at, and with it my inner voice has sprung up, Athena-like, her sword cutting through my mental vocal cords. At least for the moment.
At least for this page.
But for the summer I slept, crept away, hid away from myself. No writing, none at all, except for the Three Poems of August. (And my, looking back at them, I do admire them. I would be so much more interesting if I could inject so much venom, so much bitter rawness into my everyday life.) Instead I tucked into virtual realities, Kade my only companion, letting him do the talking when the talking was required. The space between my ears was filled with Deftones and Team Sleep for these many months, letting Chino take equal turns breathing and screaming what I was feeling, repeating after him.
‘You move…Like I want to…
To see…Like your eyes do…
We are…downstairs…
Where no one can see
New life…break away…
Tonight…I feel like more.’
And so new projects, old projects, left abandoned, lay scattered. The sense of futility overcoming again, as it always catches up with me. The guitar, my study of Tarot, the few attempts to get outside. I’ve picked up some of them in the last few weeks, Tarot especially, but I’ve taken no time to write anything down. I’m just looking at the patterns. The Devil, Death, the Three of Swords, and the Nine of Swords seem to come up most often. The three swords slicing through the heart, sorrow and betrayal. The woman with the nine swords hanging over her head, crying in bed. The patterns draw my eyes in…How many swords do I have, how many cups? How many twos or fours? How many reversed, how many upright? I have half the mind to force Kade to sit and let me draw for him, show him his patterns. ‘Ah, you are like me, too much air and intellect, too much sorrow.’ But almost any time he comes up in a position in a reading, it’s with the fiery Wands. The King of Wands with his bright red hair, half ready to get up and fight , to my Queen of Swords and her icy stare and protective silences. Fire and ice, fire and ice.
And in the spaces of all that silence the reels play back in my head, things from ten years past, 20 years past. Here it is now, seeing myself burst into tears in front of one of my mothers high school friends at the dinner table, for no reason at all, other than the fact I had the strange habit of getting flustered and overwhelmed by everything when I was forced to sit with anything for too long. Then flashing forward to a few years later, calling that same friend of hers and chewing her out in my shaking 17 year old voice for helping Mother get out of the institution she was in for her delusions. I think on what I’ll say if we ever meet at a funeral. ‘I’m sorry, I was 17. I had a rough year.’ I push my fingers impulsively over my eyes at these memories, they flash up so suddenly when I’m alone, and almost always utter an unconscious but audible, “I hate myself.”
But I don’t…Not really. All I can feel for that girl in my movie-memories is sadness. Sadness for everyone in those reels, for the little girl, for the disturbed teenager, for the newly married girl and her wayward high-school sweetheart and the comedy of errors that follows. For the lies chosen to swallow, though they weren’t believed. And all the hateful things she said and did and still seems to find herself in the position of falling back into. I want to tell her, “Get up, get out, go to school, do things right, try to care about yourself.” But how can I force her to when I can barely force myself?
And now with the memories I have noticed I’ve become overwhelmed with the pressure of time. Keeping track of time and watching time pass too quickly or too slowly. Feeling helpless against it.
I have this much Time left in work, this much Time before my break, this much Time before my lunch, this much Time before I go home, this much Time with Kade, this much Time at the end of the night to read, this much Time to eat breakfast in the morning. Three Days before my day off, this much Time for housework, for laundry, for watching a movie, for playing a game. When I think of trying new things I have to add in the amount of time it will tack on to my day, it will take 30 minutes to take a long walk with the dog, 20 minutes to practice guitar, 30 minutes to do a drawing and write it down, 45 minutes to an hour to cook dinner, how do I fit in enough time for Kade? Every single little piece of time has to fit together, and then I look at it and it overwhelms me, I’ve spent all my day counting time, here’s more time I must look after. I can’t simply enjoy or do on a whim anymore. So I black it all out, I do none of it, I let it pile up, become forgotten, rebel and take my time back, but for what? That dread on the couch, the dread of getting up, of taking a step, of starting time again. And it all keeps spiraling down and away from me. I get so tired of keeping it…of watching it.
It took me 30 minutes to write this.
At least for this page.
But for the summer I slept, crept away, hid away from myself. No writing, none at all, except for the Three Poems of August. (And my, looking back at them, I do admire them. I would be so much more interesting if I could inject so much venom, so much bitter rawness into my everyday life.) Instead I tucked into virtual realities, Kade my only companion, letting him do the talking when the talking was required. The space between my ears was filled with Deftones and Team Sleep for these many months, letting Chino take equal turns breathing and screaming what I was feeling, repeating after him.
‘You move…Like I want to…
To see…Like your eyes do…
We are…downstairs…
Where no one can see
New life…break away…
Tonight…I feel like more.’
And so new projects, old projects, left abandoned, lay scattered. The sense of futility overcoming again, as it always catches up with me. The guitar, my study of Tarot, the few attempts to get outside. I’ve picked up some of them in the last few weeks, Tarot especially, but I’ve taken no time to write anything down. I’m just looking at the patterns. The Devil, Death, the Three of Swords, and the Nine of Swords seem to come up most often. The three swords slicing through the heart, sorrow and betrayal. The woman with the nine swords hanging over her head, crying in bed. The patterns draw my eyes in…How many swords do I have, how many cups? How many twos or fours? How many reversed, how many upright? I have half the mind to force Kade to sit and let me draw for him, show him his patterns. ‘Ah, you are like me, too much air and intellect, too much sorrow.’ But almost any time he comes up in a position in a reading, it’s with the fiery Wands. The King of Wands with his bright red hair, half ready to get up and fight , to my Queen of Swords and her icy stare and protective silences. Fire and ice, fire and ice.
And in the spaces of all that silence the reels play back in my head, things from ten years past, 20 years past. Here it is now, seeing myself burst into tears in front of one of my mothers high school friends at the dinner table, for no reason at all, other than the fact I had the strange habit of getting flustered and overwhelmed by everything when I was forced to sit with anything for too long. Then flashing forward to a few years later, calling that same friend of hers and chewing her out in my shaking 17 year old voice for helping Mother get out of the institution she was in for her delusions. I think on what I’ll say if we ever meet at a funeral. ‘I’m sorry, I was 17. I had a rough year.’ I push my fingers impulsively over my eyes at these memories, they flash up so suddenly when I’m alone, and almost always utter an unconscious but audible, “I hate myself.”
But I don’t…Not really. All I can feel for that girl in my movie-memories is sadness. Sadness for everyone in those reels, for the little girl, for the disturbed teenager, for the newly married girl and her wayward high-school sweetheart and the comedy of errors that follows. For the lies chosen to swallow, though they weren’t believed. And all the hateful things she said and did and still seems to find herself in the position of falling back into. I want to tell her, “Get up, get out, go to school, do things right, try to care about yourself.” But how can I force her to when I can barely force myself?
And now with the memories I have noticed I’ve become overwhelmed with the pressure of time. Keeping track of time and watching time pass too quickly or too slowly. Feeling helpless against it.
I have this much Time left in work, this much Time before my break, this much Time before my lunch, this much Time before I go home, this much Time with Kade, this much Time at the end of the night to read, this much Time to eat breakfast in the morning. Three Days before my day off, this much Time for housework, for laundry, for watching a movie, for playing a game. When I think of trying new things I have to add in the amount of time it will tack on to my day, it will take 30 minutes to take a long walk with the dog, 20 minutes to practice guitar, 30 minutes to do a drawing and write it down, 45 minutes to an hour to cook dinner, how do I fit in enough time for Kade? Every single little piece of time has to fit together, and then I look at it and it overwhelms me, I’ve spent all my day counting time, here’s more time I must look after. I can’t simply enjoy or do on a whim anymore. So I black it all out, I do none of it, I let it pile up, become forgotten, rebel and take my time back, but for what? That dread on the couch, the dread of getting up, of taking a step, of starting time again. And it all keeps spiraling down and away from me. I get so tired of keeping it…of watching it.
It took me 30 minutes to write this.