"Time in the hand is not control of time...."
-- Adrienne Rich, "Storm Warnings"
I started my calculus class today, the next step toward getting into my desired major: forensic science. All we did today was review old algebra concepts and already I'm lost. I didn't really "get" algebra all that well, and none of those concepts seem to have stuck with me. I am hoping it all comes back soon, and I'm able to get through this class the way I did trigonometry--studying all the time, but doing well and coming out with an A- and ending up on the Dean's List to boot. Kinda silly, that.
As I waited for class to begin, I had a weird thought: I came to class today in shorts and a golf shirt, with the late afternoon sun still high in the sky and a cool breeze blowing a little before 6pm. I realized that before this course is over in December, I'll be coming to class in a heavy coat and boots, under a darkened sky with a bitter wind--and most likely snow--blowing. Class ends at 8, and on this day I drove home and watched the sun set, admiring the moon rising through the pink band of sky known as the girdle of Venus. Soon, it'll be dark by 5, and I'll trudge to and from class in the snow. The weather has to change so much before I am done with this course! The strange thing is, I feel like the days are changing so fast when I look at the sunlight, the birds, the sky, the weather; yet it seems like this semester is stretching out before me like a life sentence in prison, one day after the other, unchanging. How can it be both ways at once?
Time is such a strange thing. The hours of a day can be so cruel, hurrying by when we want them to last but dragging when we just want them to move along. The length of those hours never changes, except in our minds. What seems like a mercilessly unending day to me can, at the very same time, have flown by for you. And we can tell each other of our different perceptions, and it doesn't make a bit of difference.
Makes wearing a wristwatch seem pretty pointless.
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