Once again I am forced to acknowledge the paradox that time passes faster than the arms of a clock. This realization hits me with regular intervals, yet somehow I manage to remain equally surprised at each stroke. Like from amnesia I recollect how little I can account for the time passed. Looking into the mirror the slow alteration of my own (and familiar faces’) appearance portraits the unavoidable truth. Looking at myself I wonder: is life, the perception of time passing?
Year after year I have fought to move forward. Something I objectively have done in many aspects of life, yet subjectively I feel myself spinning in place. Allusion or illusion? that one confusing question which captured me so many years ago remains and holds me firmly still.
This last year – this third residency in Germany – passed quicker than I mentally can keep up with. By now I was supposed to have come to the first step of some groundbreaking discovery, I ask myself – have I? My own critical self: nope… My supervisor and professor tells me I am doing pretty well time-wise (of course grandeur improvements are strongly encouraged), yet the more I find out, the more lost I feel. When Oscar Wilde supposedly said: “I am not young enough to know everything”, I can identify myself. My increasing confusion proves it – time moves in fast-forward.
Pausing, I constantly ask myself: What should I do with my life? A completely unconstructive question. What would life be if not the experiences we have each day, and the feelings forced upon us therein? In truth, so much of mine has already passed that I really ought to have finished with that whole existential nonsense – but old habits die hard.
Indeed, some “old habits” needs to be killed. Like how I, despite shame, repeatedly rewind the arms of my alarm clock each morning pathetically hoping for allusion. Time is high to accept that the answer – illusion or allusion – matters not, for it does not effect the necessary course of action. If life is bound by the passing of time, then it follows – if time moves forward, so should life.
Tomorrow I am going to Rome to meet my darling mother to celebrate her 60th birthday. Once more the passing of time makes itself evident with its undeniable presence.