I think I've emotionally retarded my development by placing temporal restrictions on myself.
When I was a younger man, I had a really nice watch; a heavy Citizen with lots of superfluous bullshit on it, it told the time really accurately, and was tough as nails. I still have it; the crystal is all scratched up to be damned, and the band's been replaced about four times. Reached a point in my life, though, when I stopped wearing a watch. I found that when I wore one I would check incessantly to see what time it was, and what time it was just wasn't important as often as I was checking. That, and I lived in South Florida then and it was just the wrong watch for the climate.
I went without a watch for years. Haven't really missed it. Now, I carry a Skelanimals puppy watch, 100% plastic construction, fully digital, that my daughter gave me out of a fast food meal. I can't reasonably fit it onto any appendage I have, so I keep it in the front pocket of my hoodie or the hip pocket of my pants. I only carry this watch when I have classes or have to be somewhere at a given time. In fact, I ONLY started carrying this watch when I started school. Previously, I had disabled the clock on my iPod, and put the really nice watch Matt gave me in '04 in my nightstand.
I worked for years in a deadline-rich environment, and I came to the realization today, while pursuing personal deadlines, that maybe, just maybe, adhering to anyone else's concept of days, minutes, hours, timespans of any kind, is a mistake. How often do I wish away a month because I wish it was next month already? Or aim at the end of a week because I'm tired, thus missing what I pass on the way? I do not cram my every waking hour with entertainment and diversion, but I cram a fair bit. How much would it open our tiny little minds if everyone's perception of time extended simply from when it started to whatever I've got left without marking it all the time? Would you still hurry? Still care about how long anything took? I think I still would, but I'm not sure.
People often ask me how many books I read in a year, and I usually know that answer, because I keep lists and check at the end of the year. What if I stopped? Here's the books I read since I read some other books. I only read this one book while I was reading this book. This kid's newer than that kid, but she seems older sometimes, due to the wiseness/creepiness thing little girls do sometimes. Deciding to do this would be an easy process for me, since my sense of time is broken anyway. 15 years ago seems crystal clear, but I have troubles with the early 00s. Maybe I exist better in the stretched out times and not so well in the smaller ones, or maybe my perceptions are all jacked up. This might make me difficult to deal with in terms of being on time for stuff, but I'm fairly certain that I can pick out random instances marked by numbers and hit them without fucking up my whole "drifting through a limbostream without reference points internal anti-chronometer" thing I'm attempting.
(Today's art is by Ghetto, upon whom I visit a small art crush.)
