I took off my
watch in the middle of a lecture yesterday.
I couldn't stand it anynore. The ticking. The seconds. The knowledge that my life was getting shorter and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of this room as fast I could. I hate thinking about the hours slipping away from me, no matter how much I make of them. I want more time. I need more time.
But, then again, there's perfection in the moments that slip away. You love them because you know that in a moment everything will change - in a few hours it will just be you again, or a few days, or months even. A lifetime in front of you. It's the pain that comes with the happiness, the feeling that you can grasp but never quite grab what's inside you, that makes it so bittersweet. But better, somehow.
If I can't hold on to something, it just doesn't seem real to me anymore. Maybe because I have nothing to hold onto. Or because everything I have is something I've created, and therefore something I can destroy in a second. You never know. One day, on a whim, I might get rid of it all.
This is dangerous. I don't want to get lost in concrete measures of reality, like time or space. So I keep my watch in a drawer now. Class is less painful on boring days - I drift into my own world rather than trying to stay awake for one more spin of the second hand. One more concrete measure. I don't like to think about sleeping or waking up or moving on. I know everything is transitory. But that doesn't mean that nothing is real. Permanence is overrated, in my opinion. Absolutes are even worse.
I had a dream that everyone I knew was surrounding me, making me feel things - good things, bad things, whatever. I was caught up in a whirlwind of emotions, but left wondering when it would end, like a bad taste in my mouth. And then I walked away. I just got up and stepped away from them all while they stood, dumbfounded, wondering why. I disappeared into the trees, and woke up right away. No taste in my mouth.
So I think I need to walk away. Just for a little while. A few hours, even. I need to leave the watch in the drawer. Because in the stillness, by myself, I don't get the feeling that I'm moving at all. I have something to grab onto, even if it's only a pattern of tree branches flashing on my wall from the streetlights outside my window, or my own image whizzing by me in the window of a passing car. Moving and stillness. It's all relative, you know.