Patience

The more I study and dwell on Time, the more I am reminded of the virtues of patience. With The Viewpoints, Time became a fully formed entity. I explored Time through movement, stillness, reflection, acting and directing. Of all the Viewpoints, Time was often the hardest for me and I figured that was the case because I had difficulty de-intellectualizing the concept. I always thought to myself, "Damn, you just can't get away from this one." And in that way, Time would creep into my study of the other Viewpoints and thus it became a source of fascination and frustration.

Now, it appears as though one of my jobs is to do the thing that complicated Time as a Viewpoint, that thing being the act of intellectualizing Time as a modality of thought. It's important to note that this intellectualizing for me is an action. It is an event. Thinking as Event is a major concept. If you accept that comparison, then you must also accept that each thought must necessarily become a relic of world history. Events occur and then slip away, left to be studied or ignored. Events, even if they slip away from "memory" can still then be characterized by their absence, and absence it something in and of itself.

But Patience, this is my point for today: As I scrutinize each passing second and realize that Time is nothing but a construct of our civilization while also re-realizing that I can't quite conceive of a reality without Time, I feel as though sand is rushing away from beneath my feet. The wave crashes, ebbs, and takes the land with it as it careens back out to sea. This palpable rush of the ground moving beneath my feet seems to have a decidedly contradictory affect: On the one hand, the rush of seconds and nano-seconds feels hectic and I feel anxious. On the other hand, within this anxiety I feel some calm. It is within this calm, this calm necessitated by its own contradiction, that I am experiencing a new understanding of patience.


Time flies.
I can't. They don't move in straight lines.