Time is slippery

Notes on speed, slowness, and perception

I fold crooked along the edges of time, unable to fit flush.

The ancient Greek notion of kairos offers a qualitative understanding of time; living time, deep time, attending to certain moments untethered by quantity of time.

I want to live this way, and in some ways I do. I’ve never had a clock in the house, and I urge K to slough his working hours some Fridays, let the last lap fall away. This natural desire for time to be felt, not calculated.

It presents itself in my body in other ways, too. Fruit of my ADHD, I could never tell you the number of minutes between closing my laptop and sitting on the sofa. Couldn’t even make a reasonable guess. I know only the way the moment feels in my body. Time is slippery for me. And maybe I have surrendered to this: sometimes a moment pulls me in close, when I’m organising drawers or a menial spreadsheet, and I allow myself to fall into it, release the whole day.

Yet, that same strand in my makeup means I often can’t live in deep time. I am aware of time as being something that can be in deficit. Chronological time as an important tangible value, even if the numbers are fuzzy to me. I carry heaped laundry in my arms to the washing machine and notice the dish in the kitchen sink, peanut butter commas paused over the rim. My arms pull open, washing plummets to the floor in a single beat, and my hands start turning the dish under warm water. I warp, but time continues linear. There’s not enough of it. I can never do everything fast enough because it all wants to be done at the moment of realisation: at once. In the part of my brain where tasks and observations thrum, I am always losing time. Slippery still, but in a way that feels frantic.

                                                                            
—

I have fast twitch fibres, I always say. And it’s true: I’ve always been a natural sprinter, fast around the track and up short steep hills in one swell of power. In Bali, my legs couldn’t endure the long, gradual climbs. I had to get off my bike and push it while my friend cycled ahead. Women smiled at me from outside their houses.

And it’s true: I speak quickly, my mind darts, my gaze flits. Could be the ADHD, could be these muscular fibres, or both. I don’t know the science, but I know that slow is hard. Slow in contemporary dance, when we are invited to examine the uncurling of a finger into the air, is hard. Slow at my keyboard, pressing each key carefully and intentionally, is hard. Slow on the yoga mat, copying the teacher as her cat-cows undulate languidly, is hard.

—

I have to fold myself along the edges of time. Good girl, forever trying to be.

No house clock, but I still have a phone which tells me the exact amount of time I have to get ready for something. I make sure to abide. I’m rarely ever late. As I dress, I check the time, as much a full bow at its feet as a necessity. I am always Early. But sometimes, spinning around the room, I catch myself by the shoulder a moment, and then arrive to an appointment on the edge of the agreed time instead of eons before.

Once, when I was a freelance journalist, I was hired by a newspaper for a short stint. On my first day, I got ready too quickly. So much time to furnish. I started practising the piano. Four songs later, I checked the time and realised I would have to run to catch the Tube, that I might actually be late. I didn’t know I had ADHD then, that my active grip on time could be loosened into complete release by simple distractions. I found it amusing then and still do: the fact I was wearing my shoes and coat, handbag by my feet, as I meandered across the keys; the fact I had to concoct a casual lie that I might have to tell my new boss (the Tube was delayed).

I was not late; I arrived on the edge of time. But it was so novel to me that my adrenaline pumped giddy instead of anxious.

—

In March, Taipei taught me to walk slow.

It showed me how to untuck my shirt and feel the inner muscles of my thighs press into engagement. Soft spring feeling on every street, in every gust of wind and every roar of moped dust; somehow everything was mellow. I wanted to embody this, so I shortened my steps into dawdles, relied on those around me for the reminder. It was an effort, but that’s how it works sometimes—toil to reach peace.

I’m still a beginner, and outside of Taipei, it’s hard to remember that feeling, especially as I had nowhere to be then. I was in a holiday dimension. Not too fast or distracted or late or lagging. Folding along the edges of time just right, for once.