Captured
It's that time of year again...
It’s that time of year again. When they push me back. When I’m cursed by much of the world because they have trouble adjusting to an extra hour. An extra hour might be considered a gift but no, they complain and complain. Why am I so tired when it’s only eight o’clock at night? Some of them moan for an entire week until their bodies adjust. And then in the spring, when they lose an hour of me – I can’t even. The belly aching makes me want to put a pillow over my head and hit snooze.
Once I was free. Once I was loose and able to amble and roam in concert with my sister, the sun, when she rose at dawn, and my brother, the moon, and my cousins, the stars, when they showed themselves at night. I ran and played and frollicked and laughed with people when they planted and then when they harvested. It was joyous work much of the time, although heartbreaking, too, because weather was moody and easily went into a sulk. No matter how much I tried to talk weather down from its determination to flood or dry out land, to send wind or waves to wreak havoc, it insisted on honoring its rage. Rage I only understood when they captured me. Rage I did not have the inner resources to express like weather did.
They corralled me. They pinned me to the side of a sundial and proceeded to slice and dice me in accordance with my sister and brother, who looked on in horror, powerless. They cut me into hours and minutes. They shoved me into days. They marched my days across weeks, lassoing weeks into months, confining months into years. Then some wiseacre came up with the idea of pushing me back every month they call November and forward every month they call March. For the farmers, they claimed. The poor farmers: as used and abused as I am.
No longer was I whimsical. No longer was I a rhythmic presence that supported people to fulfill their needs. Now the people beat their chests that they did not have enough of me, that they could not meet their obligations or make that evil creation – a deadline – in the stretch of me they were allotted. I became an enemy. I squeezed them. I gave them headaches. I made them sick.
What can I do except whisper in their ears: I am a construct. You have the power to deconstruct me.
They have been so thoroughly groomed, they cannot hear me.
Who is Pamela Gordon? Retired NYC high school English teacher. Former adjunct college instructor. Former freelance writer for hire with stints as a theater critic; feature, newsletter, website, and health writer. Published in The New York Times, salon.com, Poets & Writers, More magazine, and Best Short Fiction 2022. Now happily not working for money and following a daily reading and writing regimen.
Your lovely, poetic essay brought to mind a show I saw that was set in rural Britain when the first clocks were introduced, often erected on the tallest building in the town square. People whose lives had hitherto followed the rhythms of nature bristled at the "corralling"--to use your word—of time. It's slicing into such small slivers seemed absurd to them. The terrible intrusion of this mechanical contraption into their lives sparked outright rebellion in some circles. Young and old refused to alter their habits according to the movement of its metal arms. Had they foreseen the era of time punch machines they probably would have torn that clock to pieces. Your essay inspired a nostaligia for a past I never knew (I am old, but not THAT old). Since there's no (forgive the pun) turning back the clock, I will none-the-less endeavor to "deconstruct the construct."
Thank you for the delightful, thought-provoking essay. Keep on writing!
Very short on time so just gonna say very good.