Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Tick Talk
Everyone needs Time. Time is more valuable than money. You can always get more money, but you can't borrow Time from anyone so easily. However, in the courthouse in Simonstown where I am languishing (traffic violation, parking in our narrow road on a yellow line which is occupied by over 20 cars at any time of day or night, year-round) (just in case you thought I led a more interesting life) there is more Time than anyone knows what to do with. Time lies in the passage, gathers in corners, lies in big cushions filling the courtrooms halfway up the walls. It rustles in the smug swish of the prosecutors' robes as they swan off to their teabreaks, weebreaks and other obscure matters. Because in law, the obscure matters a great deal.
We have no choice but to be here, we on the benches, sighing, shifting our bums on the smooth varnished wood. The murmur of voices rises and falls. My deadlines are lying at home, twisted and starved on the floor, dead from lack of regular Time-infusions. So here I am, drowning in Time. I have a book to kill some of it before it rises up and suffocates me completely.
The officials in the timepalace have slow movements and slow voices. Their missions are mysterious and cheerful. They go in and out of doors, discuss the whereabouts of this one or that one....there is infinite promise here, in the repository of Time. They can give you more of their Time by remanding your case to months from now. Or they can give you far more than you need, by putting you in chookie so you can contemplate the nature of Time, the length and breadth and depth of it. To be measured by the second (on late Saturday nights when ETV shows porn and the designated prisoners are raped with more fervour than usual) or by the year.
Do prisoners still draw stripes to measure time? //// What does a stripe represent? It's all up to you. If it was up to me, I'd fill the walls of my cell with intricate cross-hatching.... first horizontal lines, (a sense of calm and serenity) then cover those in oblique marks, slanting from top right to bottom left, (adding some vitality) then a new layer going in the opposite direction, (let's have some conflict and contrast) and finally the vertical ones, (the stately, the noble and dignified). Colouring in my life... How frustrating it would be to be set free halfway!
I can't, as I sit here waiting for the judge, measure time in any way except to watch the sunbeam shifting across the gray-brown carpet. It's divided at intervals by the shadows of the sunblinds. I have no watch here, and since I left my cell at home, no Time. So I'll breathe in....... breathe out....... and read my book on shamanism, which tells me I can transcend space and time......
(copied from handwritten version in the back of book) ¶ 12:24 AM
Everyone needs Time. Time is more valuable than money. You can always get more money, but you can't borrow Time from anyone so easily. However, in the courthouse in Simonstown where I am languishing (traffic violation, parking in our narrow road on a yellow line which is occupied by over 20 cars at any time of day or night, year-round) (just in case you thought I led a more interesting life) there is more Time than anyone knows what to do with. Time lies in the passage, gathers in corners, lies in big cushions filling the courtrooms halfway up the walls. It rustles in the smug swish of the prosecutors' robes as they swan off to their teabreaks, weebreaks and other obscure matters. Because in law, the obscure matters a great deal.
We have no choice but to be here, we on the benches, sighing, shifting our bums on the smooth varnished wood. The murmur of voices rises and falls. My deadlines are lying at home, twisted and starved on the floor, dead from lack of regular Time-infusions. So here I am, drowning in Time. I have a book to kill some of it before it rises up and suffocates me completely.
The officials in the timepalace have slow movements and slow voices. Their missions are mysterious and cheerful. They go in and out of doors, discuss the whereabouts of this one or that one....there is infinite promise here, in the repository of Time. They can give you more of their Time by remanding your case to months from now. Or they can give you far more than you need, by putting you in chookie so you can contemplate the nature of Time, the length and breadth and depth of it. To be measured by the second (on late Saturday nights when ETV shows porn and the designated prisoners are raped with more fervour than usual) or by the year.
Do prisoners still draw stripes to measure time? //// What does a stripe represent? It's all up to you. If it was up to me, I'd fill the walls of my cell with intricate cross-hatching.... first horizontal lines, (a sense of calm and serenity) then cover those in oblique marks, slanting from top right to bottom left, (adding some vitality) then a new layer going in the opposite direction, (let's have some conflict and contrast) and finally the vertical ones, (the stately, the noble and dignified). Colouring in my life... How frustrating it would be to be set free halfway!
I can't, as I sit here waiting for the judge, measure time in any way except to watch the sunbeam shifting across the gray-brown carpet. It's divided at intervals by the shadows of the sunblinds. I have no watch here, and since I left my cell at home, no Time. So I'll breathe in....... breathe out....... and read my book on shamanism, which tells me I can transcend space and time......
(copied from handwritten version in the back of book) ¶ 12:24 AM
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