I spend most of my time alone, in my flat, doing nothing. Just
devouring time. I assume people think I am sad or feel sorry for me but I
dont actually know as I dont talk to anyone. I do as little as I
possibly can, day in day out, not because I am lazy or because there is
something wrong with me but because I am engaged in a battle with time.
Im not sure that I can win but I will fight. Id rather do that than
succumb to times demands like all of you.
I used to be like you, well as much as any one person can be
like another anyway. What I mean is that I used to do stuff, fill
my time with work, hobbies, holidays the usual. At the time I
didnt really think about why I did that. I was just following the herd
and behaving in the way that everyone else does. I was no different, nothing
special about me.
But Im not like you anymore. Now I AM different and that
is not to suggest I am better than you, just different. The change came 7 years
ago. I was sitting in the park, a late afternoon in late summer, just gazing at
the sky, lost in nothing. I was admiring the beautiful blue when I noticed the
moon. Id seen this many times before but on this occasion, for some
reason, I saw it as I had done as a child.
It was odd, out of place and certainly not normal. I have no
idea where the thought came from but it suddenly struck me that the moon had
missed its cue, it had blown the whole charade. Seeing the moon hanging there
in the sky during the day made me realise that the daytime as merely a special
effect designed to divert attention from the fact we are, at all times,
clinging on to the edge of a vast, dark expanse of nothing.
We get used to the shifts in time from day to night and they are
so normal that we stop questioning them. We see the day as just that, daytime,
not thinking really that it is merely the happy outcome of the suns rays
refracting through the atmosphere that cocoons us.
Same with night. We see it not as a window into the infinity
that surrounds us, the uncertainty of nothingness in which we float, but as an
event in itself.
Seeing the moon that day made me think that daytime acts as
distraction it allows us to forget our true situation. We dont
know what we exist in; the best description we have is space but that is
totally unsatisfying. The truth is that we exist in a realm, dimension, call it
what you will, of uncertainty and fear, emptiness and nothing.
I was once like you but I can now I take a more detached view of
things. You have conditioned yourselves to look up at the night sky and the
stars it holds and think this beautiful. Its not, you are kidding
yourselves. It is utterly terrifying and I think every one of you would,
considering it properly, agree. So you choose not to think about it. When the
sun shines on us, you think how beautiful the blue sky is and how lucky you
are. But it is a hoodwink, a lie, a temporary distraction from our true state
of existence.
And during that period you busy yourselves enjoying the respite
from the aggressive truth. You kill time as they say.
Time is killed, as you say, because it is a terrifying beast yet
you continue to feed it by offering more and more of yourself to it in a
desperate attempt to fill it.
In an attempt to sate an ancient, vengeful god you offer up the
sacrifice of your existence to it, not knowing why or if it will make any
difference but hoping that if you give enough, sacrifice enough, that the god
will look upon you benevolently. It wont it never has and it never
will.
Only when people finally reach the end, when they run out of
time, do they realise that they cannot and will not win and that the feeding of
time is pointless they have nothing to show for it, cant do
anything with it. The only winner is time itself it continues to be fed
and it devours us and our petty activities remorselessly, laughing as we
increase the frantic pace of our lives desperately trying to keep that monster
happy, sated and still.
But it will always win and nothing you do can ever alter that
for it is only time that controls the arrival and departure of the sun from our
world. Sunlight is times greatest ruse, for time dictates when that happy
veil of daylight is lifted and the darkness within which we exist is exposed.
At night, you understand, albeit briefly, your predicament and
you retreat, stop doing and rest, lie still and hide from this
terrifying glimpse of reality. When the darkness is revealed, your need to feed
time is gone as the activity is suddenly exposed for what it is a
pointless attempt to hide from the vast darkness of our existence. For those
short hours, you can defeat time until it allows the sun to return in tandem
with your frantic activity. And time continues to gorge itself on you.
Which is why I live the way I do complete inactivity
wherever possible. Of course I have to eat but as much as possible I have it
made for me and delivered. An inheritance means I dont have to work. I
dont have to see friends as I dont have any. All I really have is
my solitary, silent battle with time. Whenever I am doing nothing, I am beating
time for I am not feeding it with my fear. I am facing it down, refusing to bow
to its demands for action.
Why should I feel compelled to do stuff just to fill the day,
this blue-hued lie? Why shouldnt I just lie here, still, ignoring the
passing of day into night and back into day? Regardless of day or
night our predicament remains unchanged.
I wont take part in the charade, becoming just another one
to be consumed. My lone stance against this tyranny of time may seem mad but
your desire, your need to do stuff to satisfy this arbitrary force, seems mad
to me.
I dont accept the lie and I am certainly not complicit in
it. It is you who are perpetuating this, the greatest lie of all and every time
you look up on a sunny day and admire it, you are nourishing that lie. Every
time you DO stuff to keep yourself busy, to avoid the nagging of time, you are
denying the knowledge that sits deep within you, a knowledge that you cannot
bear to face - that we live a dark, lonely existence and that the
space we live in is an endless void of deep, deep darkness
punctuated with a few pinpricks of light straining pointlessly to break the
hold of that darkness.
Yours may be a more enjoyable existence but at least mine is
honest.