Come closer and maybe — just maybe — we’ll fall in love with Time in time.
Hello, darling, how are you today? Dreadful? Mournful? Whimsical? Tearful? Hopefully tearful. Humans are so beautiful when they cry. So vulnerable, so honest, and so so human. Porcelain skin streaked with glistening tears….or maybe darker skin holding obscure liquid diamonds…or perhaps dotted and blemished skin carrying minuscule mirrors…Oh, how marvelous crying is!
I’m glad you dropped by today. I’ve been feeling quite lonely and was desperately seeking attention these past few minutes, yet no one would pay attention. Such is the pathetic obscurity of my life though, so I mustn’t complain.
But anyway! Let’s get down to things, shall we? Today’s tale, hm… I had hoped you were crying but maybe you weren’t or maybe you aren’t or maybe you will…what tense are we using again? Well, it doesn’t matter much either way. I shall tell you about—
Oh! Shall we talk about the tale of me today? I don’t think I’ve told you that one yet. I sure hope not because I can’t recall speaking of me and how dreadful it would be if I cannot remember me.
It’s been ages since we talked, darling; I wonder if you remember me after all this time… What do you mean you don’t know me? Darling, you’re quite dense now, aren’t you? I’ve known you for all this time and you’ve known me for the same. We don’t know how long this time is but I assure you it’s long enough for you to forget, remember, forget once more, and recollect again.
Dear me, I’ve regressed once more haven’t I? You need to remind me of my task, love, my head’s running amok and I haven’t the physical capabilities to run after it. Ah, but neither do you, huh? It’s alright, darling, we can go running together one day.
It seems the topic of me is much too vast for the time we have to-day. I suppose there will never be a time enough for me.
… I met a girl some time ago. A lovely human she was, held all the attributes of being one.
Have you ever read No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai? Give it a read if you haven’t. Or maybe Frankenstein. Shelley is a wonderful storyteller. But back to our human girl. Her pain was so very raw and, darling, her eyes were gorgeous, oh-so beautiful: a lusciously dead brown, stale and monotone with none of the gleam you’d think a girl of her age ought to have.
She was like an hourglass but in all the worst ways. Constantly being emptied out with nothing pressuring her except the casual forces of nature and the mere act of living. Only when prompted or in another’s company could she be filled wrong-side up. Oh, how devastating it was to watch her go from a vast empty chasm to the point of suffocation. She held all the attributes that form an hourglass yet she lacked what she cared for most in an hourglass: the figure. No one in this society cared if she were empty or full or somewhere in between when the sand was still softly thumping down the crevice and the human girl knew that. If only, she thought, if only I could grasp that figure so near yet so far. Then the emptiness would be at least worthwhile.
How lonely she sat in this world. Do you know the difference between lonely and alone? One is much more desirable. Her only measurable worth was her display but in that she was lackluster. If someone stopped by to pick her up and turn her world upside down and wrong side up, she’d have her soul filled and she’d be free for just a little while. Darling, don’t you ever let this be you, okay? You don’t need someone to revolutionize you, ‘specially not a man. Always remember that, darling. Or don’t. Perhaps it’d be better to remember what Fitzgerald once said. Quite a wise man he was but only in some attributes. Men are distasteful by default.
Ah, you wanted me to tell you a story, didn’t you? I haven’t much room left so I’ll keep it short and simple.
Let us return to the hourglass.
It’s the only true measure of time for it ticks not by battery nor electricity but rather the mere pull of gravity. How simple it is, yet humans, in all their very human greed and lust, wanted more. They weren’t satisfied with such a simple contraption that did so much, thus they sought machinery more complicated and costly. And the hourglass was left aside for dust to settle home, only to be picked up occasionally for its “vintage aesthetic.” Eternal yet ephemeral. Nonetheless it was man-made in its makings and hitherto no one realized that it, like all other human things, was but a fleeting friend.
Don’t blame her, love. Even if she was broken and worn down by Time, the hourglass human girl would have stayed as long as Time would allow…. but Time didn’t give her for very long. I suspect it wasn’t only Time that stole her though. Maybe it was her own kind. Humanity let her sit there in her loneliness like a wallflower with too many thoughts and too few distractions. When she was finally plucked from her place at the display glass, it was by a man — it’s always a man, it seemed also that the Serpent of Eden was also a man — that led her on only to let her fall. He toyed with the trinket, fiddling with her between his hands; she was wrapped around his fingers and he knew it.
But he got bored with the human girl, as most men tend to do, and he dropped her. Her glass heart broke, spilling across the floor in disgrace like a broken mosaic.
And all the light she reflected was gone, for her Light — the man — had left to shine upon the other side of the world. Melted sand, formed after hours of labor and meticulous construction, destroyed in mere seconds.
It was possible for her to have been reconstructed. There was glue and there was time and there was gravity on her side, yet she saw no point in the act of living and so she let herself fall and shatter into a million pieces such that no one, ‘specially not the King’s men and their horses, could piece together again.
That’s what love does, darling. You endure this hurt — this painful, grasping, clawing, desperate hurt that suffocates you like a noose around your neck — for the blissful sweetness of hope that this time, this Time, love will stay.
Let this be a lesson. Everything is a double-edged sword; never pour yourself wholeheartedly into something like the hourglass did. Filling and filling, falling and falling, as you empty yourself for others and you can’t — or perhaps you shan’t — be refilled until you’re reset by someone else to fill once more.
Don’t succumb to the claws of gravity and Time unless you are willing to face the repercussions.
And if you are, if you decide that this love is worth it all… then let yourself fall, darling. There’s nothing like a free fall. The feeling of flight and the deafening sound in your ears and the air beneath you and the world under you and the sight of the ground coming closer and closer; you don’t have a parachute nor a bungee line and yet you smile because salvation was never your goal from the start.
Dear me, I'm speaking as if you’re falling as of now. Are you? I sure hope you are. There’s nothing in life without a little death and love. Was that too many and’s there? Perhaps so, but Hemingway did the same. He might be a tad bit mad at me stealing his conjunctions. He’s a marvelous storyteller; his tales always make me bleed. Give him a visit for me will you? I haven’t the time to drop by for the amount he keeps me.
Time is ticking now, love, go and play and laugh and cry and read and write and paint and sleep and live and be human. Just don’t forget. You don’t have to remember– just don’t forget… Forget what, you ask? Well, this time around, of course.
I’ll see you soon, mon petit sablier, and maybe next time you won’t have forgotten who I am, but it’s alright if you have because we’ll still have known each other for all this time and all that time as well.
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