By Kris Neri, of the Femmes Fatales
Is the passage of time real or just a human construct? A construct, of course! Fact—not fantasy. All the scientists whose voices I hear in my head confirm that.
As a writer, I deal with different versions of time regularly. Novel writing time is different from what most humans believe the passage of time to be. You can’t very well hold reader interest by writing chapter after chapter of your protagonist so zoned out, she binges on days of watching Netflix with no ability to sum up what she actually saw. That’s the kind of thing that causes readers to stop reading and hurl the book at the far wall; hopefully, they’re not digital editions. In novel writing time, when nothing much is happening on the page, you dispatch it quickly.
But when what happens on the page is vitally important to the narrative, you let it play
out. There’s an exaggerated cliche for that principle, which we see in books and even more in movies and on TV. That’s the oft-repeated scene with the bomb set to go off in something like a minute, but which stretches out to over fifteen minutes screen time. Hey, just because it’s been exploited ad infinitum doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It means the principle is so effective, writers too lazy to find a new way of presenting that idea overuse it.
The way we humans experience time in real life is also suspicious. Can you deny it? We say that every minute contains the same sixty seconds, and every hour spans an equal sixty minutes. But do they? Sometimes, when we don’t have much to do, or just don’t feel like doing anything, the passage of time drags on interminably. But when too many demands come down on us, or when we feel overstressed, time seems to move at too fast a pace. We simply don’t have enough time to do everything required of us. Doesn’t that mean it moves at different rates?
Don’t agree? Time is the supposed outcome of the earth rotating while
simultaneously moving around the sun. Did you ever feel the earth move? Now, I’m not talking about mind-blowing nookie—that’s another overused cliche anyway. As a former Californian I can tell you when the earth moves, you know it. In the decades that I lived there I felt thousands of little earthquakes, too many moderate ones, and one so gigantic, I didn’t imagine it would ever come to an end. Let me tell you, when that happens, when the earth’s plates grind against each other, and the shifting of your home's roof roars, and every breakable object in your house shatters into pieces, and every book on your many, many bookshelves crash to the floor—that thirty-five seconds feels like the week from hell. Try explaining that.
Time in lockdown seems different, too. In some ways, as a full-time writer and online writing instructor, it hasn’t changed that much for me. I’m still at the computer for what we call hours every day. It’s the other hours that dragged for me. Those extra hours that used to be spent at writer gatherings, where we actually got to hug each other. I miss those. I miss filling that time with meals in restaurants, gathering with friends, getting coffee in coffee shops, in-person critique group meetings, and so much more. I miss leisurely strolling through stores, when I don’t really need anything. I know I will miss the businesses forced to close because their cash flow stopped—as a former business owner, my heart really goes out to them. I even miss running out to the grocery store for that one ingredient I forgot for that night’s dinner. That little break seemed to refresh me after hours spent teaching, before I made the shift into writing.
I really miss breathing without a mask. What I won’t miss is spending endless time
hunting for toilet paper and yeast, both have magically re-appeared now. Were they ever missing, or did you have them all at your house? But that those extra hours seem to drag now on the Netflix binging that I’d never depict a character doing, doesn’t that prove that the sensation of time passing is just something we’ve made up? Isn’t it more of a feeling than an actual experience?
On the other hand, after these months in lockdown, my hair has gotten kinda shaggy, and from what we call weeks of not wearing earrings, the holes in my lobes have almost closed up.
Does that mean time has actually passed? Or does it mean I've lost my mind?! Hmmm…the scientists in my head and I will have to discuss that.
What do you miss most from self-isolating?
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