8th grade 7th period Altered TIme

(When I started this section as a grade and measured it out in periods, I completely forgot that I once lived my days in 7 periods.)


A consideration of time and memory raises the question of how much of an event exists in the present and how much forms in memory. The memory becomes an immediate souvenir. Is the personal souvenir a way of enhancing memory? How much does it take us out of the present moment? Usually I play in order to engage more fully with something in the present. I do this by playing with associations to the present and distortions of those associations. This process engages some of my attention and pulls other attention away from aspects of the present. In play the balance between what we attend to and what we edit shapes our experience. Time allows us to carry out these processes. Time also allows us to give our self the impression of mastering some aspect of our perceived world.

One day I play with Chinese characters in the Tao Te Ching. I allow myself plenty of time to copy the lines onto different surfaces, which I plan to use to make small packages for objects. I discover that the characters start to become familiar so that by the middle of the day, I can set up my own simple quotes. The game didn’t have that as a goal. As a tangent I sense learning by exposure and repetition and distortion. In an odd twist one of the lines that I copy says that this kind of behavior veers off of the path and therefore abandons the way of the Tao. Then I decide to write verses of the Tao on the outside of structures in my yard. At first the strokes of the brush are awkward, eventually I run out of room and delight in drawing the final characters on the ground. This is one of those moments that are almost too much fun. An acquaintance sells caps and tee shirts that reassure: “It’s okay to have too much fun.”

Time that amorphous ether surrounds the present that we can’t see, though we know, or should we say that we believe, exists. We usually fight time. We view it as taking away from our experience, when time creates the imagined medium that we use to hold experience. I hope by being more playful more of us can reclaim time. Reclaim the time it takes to have the experience of being alive. When we attend to the connections and associations, we make life playful. And like looking for pennies or sharks teeth, we find opportunities where before we missed the cues.