{"id":918,"date":"2023-05-06T07:00:47","date_gmt":"2023-05-06T06:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/?p=918"},"modified":"2023-07-16T18:55:17","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T17:55:17","slug":"give-time-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/give-time-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Give Time time"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Text by Otilia Dragan)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Time visited me today again, during work. She sat on my lap, her long, flimsy fingers playing\u00a0 with a wavy patch of my hair and made me sway along with her in my office chair.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime, come on, I told you to stop showing up like this. How am I supposed to do my work?\u201d I had piles and piles of translations to finalise and write up. Very important work about dairy cow mistreatment regulations that inevitably had loopholes in them, the types of steel that were okay to be used for bridge-building, legislation corrections about things that slipped my mind even as I was working on them.\u00a0 This was stuff that could allegedly make or break the European Union.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll die one day,\u201d she said with a smirk-like smile. I remembered I hadn\u2019t yet\u00a0 decided what I wanted done with my body after. Cremation seemed final and rather boring, and risky in case I was still alive in a massive tightly shut oven. Coffins and that shebang were unnecessary. I heard there were other options these days, like having a suit of mushrooms custom created, to be fed with your nail clippings while you\u2019re still alive. Eat me, friends <\/em>\u2013 I sure ate you all my life and loved you<\/em>. But that made my skin crawl. Maybe I wanted to be planted around a tree seed or be made into a small diamond, or something like that, that seemed beautiful. Not that it mattered much right now. I opened a drawer and pulled out my cheap grey notebook containing all my recent story snippets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know I\u2019ll die one day, just\u2026Before I die I said I wanted to write more. Maybe now is a good time to write something not-for-work,\u201d I said, and hunched over the notebook, pen held tightly, at the ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn work time?\u201d she teased. She was so annoying, the way she was so confident in her own role and capacities. She was also beautiful in that mind-numbing, mousy ice-queen way.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you stop showing up, sneaking up on me like that?\u201d She seemed to do this a lot lately, and it truly got to me, sometimes. Her big, grey-blue eyes were dull in her face and her ash blond hair fell in soft waves over my shoulders, her breath on my cheek \u2013 she was much too close.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember you\u2019re growing older every day and that\u2019s not a bad thing per se, but you do want a baby one day and you also want to write your novel, sorry, novels<\/em>, and become a writer and a cook\u00a0 or baker and a professional something-or-other while being a true friend and a good daughter. And of course you\u2019ll want a partner one day that isn\u2019t me,\u201d she added, coyly.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime.\u201d I stared at her, tense in my shoulders. She pressed her face against my collarbone and\u00a0 giggled.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not here to stress you out, you know, I\u2019m just here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy here? Don\u2019t you have someplace else to be?\u201d<\/p>\n

She hugged me tightly and I wasn\u2019t sure I was ready just this second to do with her what she wanted to do with me. \u201cCan we revisit this\u2026this conversation later?\u201d I blabbed, feeling her bony body cutting into my thighs as she shifted around.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean\u2026\u201d She gestured vaguely at the sunny outside, her long white-grey robes of gauze and\u00a0 taffeta brushing against my navy work-trousered legs. \u201cCan I interest you in some memories, at\u00a0 least?\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t say yes, I didn\u2019t consent, and her cold fingertips already reached my temples, her whispers filling my head.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat one time you woke up terrified of some dream creature at night and wet the bed, when you were ten.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot that one, please.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOk, then.\u201d She tried again, this time I closed my eyes and helped her along, and her cold fingers\u00a0 turned lukewarm against my skin. Her silver amulet bracelet somehow got hooked in my hair and\u00a0 caught a painful little strand.<\/p>\n

\u201cOuch! Time, please.\u201d She changed the angle of her arm, releasing the hair from her bracelet\u00a0 with her other hand, miraculously, without ripping it out. I relaxed a bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe times James put his hand on your knee or leg while he was driving you home, because he\u00a0 didn\u2019t want to stop touching you.\u201d I could feel his stupid, gigantic hand again and that belly-joy of\u00a0 being in his presence.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop.\u201d I breathed out, felt my butt tingling from the bad posture on my chair, and the heaviness\u00a0 of her on me. \u201cStop touching me, now.\u201d She frowned and shook her head.<\/p>\n

\u201cHoney, you know that I can\u2019t. I mean, just in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

I knew, but surely she could make an exception for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t figured it out yet,\u201d I said, trying to push her away, my miserable half-love for her hurting\u00a0 me. \u201cThis life business, this entire thing, what I want to do with you. I love you, you know I do, I\u00a0 just\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Her face was waiting and she was still holding onto me, her long hand slack around my wrist. \u201cCould you not let me do my own thing for a bit? Look the other way, you know, just until I find exactly what I want and need and we pick up from there again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t work that way,\u201d she said with sadness in her voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m yours, whether you want me or not. And,\u201d she sat up still holding my wrist, making me\u00a0 follow her around the office. \u201cYou\u2019re mine, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so many people\u2019s,\u201d I sighed deeply, thinking, feeling strangely trapped by nothing in particular.\u201cWell, if you love me so much, if you\u2019ll inevitably change me over yourself, could you at least\u00a0 give me back some good things from before?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThings like what, dear?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike my brother? You know, back to the way things were?\u201d<\/p>\n

Time blinked slowly, looked away and then back at me: \u201cI can give you memories of how it was before. You know the rules for the rest, though. Nothing that didn\u2019t come to pass can be brought again in present.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is useless, then. You\u2019re useless,\u201d I tried to hurt her, but I also meant it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concept of usefulness is so pass\u00e9,\u201d she joked, but I could tell I had a small impact. Her eyes looked deeper, darker and I could smell a different scent in the room, a weird mood. Something like the smell of tattoo ink, or maybe like plasma leaking out of a freshly needled design.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am actually useless, but so is your life. I am not saying this to hurt you. Maybe I should\u00a0 give you some time to yourself, to see what it\u2019s like without me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Excitement built up in me. \u201cYou mean that? Even if it\u2019s against the rules?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou and I make the rules of how we work,\u201d she said, haughtily, as if the universe and everyone else didn\u2019t have a bearing on our every move, most days.<\/p>\n

And so I escaped the fabric of time at eleven o\u2019clock on a work Wednesday. Hump day \u2013 what a\u00a0 strange denomination. As if the sole purpose of working is to get over working and get away from\u00a0 it. It\u2019s funny because it\u2019s true. And so now I was \u201cstuck\u201d but really free for the first time in my life. I\u00a0 couldn\u2019t move a thing, couldn\u2019t change a thing, there was no wind outside my window to move the\u00a0 little bamboo plants planted on the terrace. The grey carpet in my office and even the colours of\u00a0 everything turned a similarly dull colour despite the blocked sunlight. Something had shifted in the\u00a0 faces of my colleagues, and as I peeked into their offices they all had a sleepy little expression on, something akin to peace.<\/p>\n

I sat on their desks, rolled around in the quiet of everything, my mind loosely connected to the most\u00a0 creative bits of me. I tried to steal a sheet of paper and put it all down, quickly, before I ran out of\u00a0 time but it felt more like time had run out of me. A sense of deep loneliness grasped me, but as I\u00a0 looked around I saw and felt how little I had to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing\u201d was the only predicament and the only task. In this space it didn\u2019t matter either way if I showered or ate or even thought about things. In fact, I didn\u2019t sweat, I wasn\u2019t hungry, all I had were my emotions but even they gradually loosened and made way for the stream of unyielding,\u00a0 never-ending peace of this void. And was it peace?<\/p>\n

Moments, days and months didn\u2019t exist, my watch had stopped. I remembered everything but\u00a0 wanted nothing. I was still breathing, but I didn\u2019t know why anymore. And right before I closed and\u00a0 opened my eyes after a long bout of sitting on the carpet and meditating, I saw her.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t run after her, I didn\u2019t have to. I just followed her with my eyes. The body of a goddess in thin red shoes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you ready to go back?\u201d she asked, meekly.<\/p>\n

The words jumbled in my head; everything from \u201cmaybe\u201d to \u201cjustifiable\u201d and \u201cLoch Lomond\u201d\u00a0 wanted to come out all at once, to be witnessed in their full beauty and expression. \u201cYou can\u2019t leave me alone like that,\u201d I managed to utter, when my tongue finally settled. \u201cI was perhaps unfair, I\u2019m sorry,\u201d she said, taking my face between her hands. They felt dry but smooth, I felt safe and not too different from how I\u2019d felt before, except that now someone else was listening. And time was on my side.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake me back,\u201d I said, but I remembered it all. I still knew the sorrow, the breathlessness of her effect on me. \u201cI don\u2019t like the grey of this carpet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Text by Otilia Dragan) Time visited me today again, during work. She sat on my lap, her long, flimsy fingers playing\u00a0 with a wavy patch of my hair and made me sway along with her in my office chair. \u201cTime, come on, I told you to stop showing up like this. How am I supposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[100,98,99],"ppma_author":[101],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-body","tag-death","tag-time"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Otilia-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":101,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"otilia-dragan","display_name":"Otilia Dragan","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url2x":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g2x"},"author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":"Otilia Dragan is a Romanian-Luxembourgish journalist and writer, with a deep-seated love for the English language and literature(s). A fantasy literature graduate, she has been imagining and writing stories and poems since she was in kindergarten. Her main passion and source of inspiration are fairy tales and mythology. She has a penchant for sensory writing and a \u2018curiouser and curiouser!\u2019 approach to people and life in general."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1050,"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions\/1050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anerwelten.lu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}