Every morning I’m late. Not terribly badly so, technically I’m not even late but I’m certainly at least a tinsy later than I wish I was. And yet it always starts rather fine. I wake up very easily, jump out of bed and I’m instantly awake and functional. No time wasted there. Breakfast, hair, teeth, make up… It’s all well and good until suddenly I check the time and it has gone. I’m two minutes over while I should be on my bike already.
At that point I still have to perform all the minor actions which are normally neglected when it comes to scheduling how long you need to leave home. Picking up your shoes, maybe rummaging in the shoe box to find the right pair for today. Grabbing your keys, maybe checking all your pockets from yesterday’s jacket to try and find them, or maybe you bag, or maybe behind that goddamn recycle-ready piece of advertising on the kitchen shelf that was hiding them. Dumping the said piece of advertising in the recycling bin. (KIDS EAT FREE! 2 Free Personal Pizzas when you buy a Large Pizza* at regular menu price. *Excludes cheese & tomato. Not valid with any other offer: please mention when ordering. Pizza from the menu or create your own up to 4 toppings. Expires 21st October 2012.) Going back to the bedroom to check if the window is indeed closed. Most times it is, sometimes it’s not, you definitely will have to double check again tomorrow. Once at the door again, retracing your steps back to the bedroom to get the keys you’ve just abandoned somewhere on the way. Wrapping up the fresh bread in a bag so it doesn’t dry over the course of the morning. Slipping in your shoes, optionally lacing them up, locking the back door. Getting your bike out of the shed, closing the shed door, making sure you actually locked the house back door, putting on your gloves, getting your bike out the garden, closing the door, removing one glove, struggling with the hidden garden door bolt, hop on your bike and at last, start pedalling away. With luck spending a minute putting back in place your chain that has just came off again and cursing yourself for still not having fixed or replaced your bicycle. Yet knowing you’re still not going to do anything about it for weeks if not month but grabbing new plastic gloves from the petrol station to not dirty your hands as you daily put the chain back in place. Variations are infinite.
Nevermind. So we know about the last five to ten minutes: we certainly know where that time has gone. But what about just before? How does time jump to forty seven past with no warning? It has to be some insidious reason, something cunning must be operating on the sly. Ten minutes can’t disappear at once and their absence come unnoticed. For months did I seek for an explanation, always alert and on the lookout… but my investigations remained unfruitful. Until I felt it. A slight pinch, a hint of a hiccup, a wee little shiver. That very one time, one of them was not cautious enough and let me feel it. I didn’t notice it at that time, or rather it was so insignificant I barely recorded it. Immediately I forgot about it. But sensations live through you more than you realize, so the next time it happened I was able to recognize it. Gradually I learnt to identify it.
It’s so faint it’s hard to describe. It would be something like a light rain on a skylight. The slightest drizzle you could imagine, barely heavier than fog, just enough for gravity to come into play… but continuous. You could hardly hear it over your own breath, that’s how they do it. One second at a time, they steal time from you. What is a second after all? How would do even notice? Still…one second after another a whole lifetime unfolds. They take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves.
When I think about it, being one of them I would surely do the same. When your lifespan expectancy peaks at thirty days, no wonder you try to expand it. Especially when seconds seem so meaningless to a being who’s going to live for ninety years or so. That's such a harmless misdeed. Besides, the operation is pretty much risk free: human beings don’t pay attention to midges. We just wave them away when they fly at our faces too insistently.
And yet… Yet our faces wrinkle and age, one second at a time.
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