This is an excerpt from a novel in progress, Driving Cab... Let me know what you think of it.
In the bedroom, Anne is sound asleep. I put my yellow cap on top of the dresser, take my wallet and comb out of my back pocket and lay it next to the cap. I sit down on my side of the bed, take off my shirt and pants, and hang them on the chair.
Crawling into bed, I put an arm around Anne and snuggle my pelvis into her soft warm body. I reach a hand for a breast. Anne pushes my hand away. ”Not now, I’m trying to sleep,” she tells me. I feel the emptiness of my hand for several seconds and then move it to Anne’s belly. I let it rest a couple seconds feeling the beat of her heart, and then begin moving slowly downward. “Come on,” I have to get up at seven,” she says and turns over.
It’s all a question of timing, isn’t it? Whether you’re in or out of time, I tell myself and think what a complex phenomenon time is.
It is thought that has made it so, says a voice inside my head. Time exists but not in the way that most of us imagine. Time, space, and thought are all the same thing. Time is the space between chirps as a bird lays a path for its mate to follow. Time exists in the rippling of the wind through a field of sparse headed barley. Follow the rippling and the chirping in the flow of time. Follow to a knurled, dark, leafless winter tree. See that empty space does not separate but joins the branches one to another, to the sky, to the birds, to all that exists. Watch a pair of red-breasted sparrows flit from branch to branch, from tree to tree, from sky to sky in the unity of empty space. Time is the mode on which we travel. Not time is an ever-flowing infinite expansion with no beginning or end. Words have beginning and end, not eternity. Eternity is beyond the material mode in which language must mold all of its compression.
I lay on my back and think, Time is yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is the word that separates us form the cosmos. It is the word that binds time in linear construct, straight lines which have become so all important. Man, creator of the word, the only rational creature in nature, the only creature who disobeys nature’s laws, the only animal that worships a straight line. The line that can be measured in time. Nature is inclined to the circle, the circle with no beginning or end.
I roll over on my belly and think some more. Man is a part of the eternal circle, an infinite part of the all. We are joined to every other living thing through an infinite ever-expanding timelessness. In the timeless circle all life joins hands…. The spirit that gave life to my body as germ cells joined did not come into existence with my conception. Before I came Life was there waiting to breathe existence into the cell. The life force always was, and I always am also. Jesus knew what he spoke of. Truth lives on with time though words distort it. Time is the chopping up of life. Our rotation, revolution, and cosmic whirl though space happens in time creating night and day, and the seasons. Bit life is a never ceasing expansion. The Earth doesn’t tick off seconds, minutes, hours. The earth doesn’t wail of days, weeks, years, millenniums. It sings…. Sings of the eternal… .
I turn over on my back. It’s we who do the slicing and the marking. We try to verbalize it all. We lock time in watertight compartments. We measure her with precision instruments at Greenwich. We lock ourselves in our words, myself tells me.
I need more time! Time is up! Time has flown away! I’ m late…. I’m late…. All the stars are falling down falling down falling down….I have to get away. I need some time off!!!! Why can’t you ever be on time???? I ain’t got time to mess wid you…. Time has gone and passed me by…. It’s the wrong time…. I wasn’t born yesterday…. Yesterday! Yesterday! Yesterday! And, Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Just wait ‘til my ship comes in!
Time…. Time…. Time…. Tick…. Tock…. Tick…. Tock…. Tick … Tock…. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock…. Tick tock tick tock tick tock…. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Ticktochticktocktichtockticktockticktockticktockti cktockticktockticktock. It’s time! If only we had the time. Quit wasting time. Time on my hands. What are you going to do with your leisure time? In the sweet bye and bye… in the sweet bye and bye. We will meet our precious Jesus in the sweet bye and bye. It’s time again! Ancient Time… Medieval Time….
Modern Time…. War Time and Peace Time…. Your Time and My Time. One Time and Two Time…. Time on a Dime…. Take Time and Lose Time…. No Time like All Time…. Rum Time and Ball Time…. Coffee Time and Tea Time…. You Time and Me Time…. And, I Gotta Let Be Time…. Slow Time and Fast Time…. First Time and Last Time…. And, there’s No Time Like the Present Time….
I roll back on my belly and think of the growing in time that Howell describes in his book War Dance, a growth which is all inclusive and ever expanding. The seed uses time in its metamorphose from dead fruit to fruit of the earth. In it’s time there is sleeping and waking. It grows in wind, rain, and warming sunshine. It takes its nourishment from the sun and returns it to the earth. Am I any different from the seed? I ask myself
Are we separated by anything more than the words we utter? myself answers.
A little quirk in time that must be noted, I tell myself here in 2005 as I write the final revision. The words that I thought about time were not thought as I lay in bed at the end of my cab-driving shift in 1971 I remember thinking those words at my typewriter in the backroom of the hundred-year-old ranch house that we rented from Milligan. We had been living on the sheep ranch for at least a year when I wrote those words. I remember Alex telling me in 1974 or 75 that he really liked that section on time.
And, today in the year 2005 we are not yet done with time. Remember Krishnamurti’s description. It takes time to go from here to there. Time separates. Truth is beyond time. Time and the word are one. Time-space has purpose in the material world, but time-space has no place in the psychological world. Let me quote from him, “Thought is bound by time and time is petty; it’s this pettiness that prevents “seeing”. Seeing is always instantaneous, as understanding, and the brain which is put together by time, prevents and also perverts seeing. Time and thought are inseparable; put and end to one, you put an end to the other.”
And another ‘I’ inside my head adds, The dreams that I dreamed were not dreamed as I lay in my bed in Walnut Creek. The dream must have come from seventy- four or seventy-five recorded around the time that you wrote about time. Time is very tricky… trick trick trick trick tricky….
