Time had been feeling melancholy

john | Oct. 17, 2023, 7:43 a.m. Time

Unsure why his heart hurt, he pondered the past.  South Africa came to his mind, for it was not something that could be described in words.  He had to go again, but why?  This was the thing Time wished he had known.  It was nothing short of monumental to move across the cosmos and end up desiring a little spot in the infinite expanse that is the Universe and want to end up on a remote beach with frigid waters. 

Maybe it was Time's old friend, Love.  She was a wonderful thing.  She brought light into his day, as if there was anything as beautiful as it.  There wasn't.  She spread her presence to everything that she touched.  He met her there.

He misdirected his stupidity to great lengths, only to end in the moment he knew he would never have again.  Not that it would of mattered had he had it.  Probably couldn't of appreciated the perfectness of the moment.

It would take half a decade for Time to even seriously consider the thought of the trip again.  Space time moves in such a way that it leaves everything relative.  It's that he searches for something.  Maybe it's Love, but he knows she will never be there again, nor would he even recognize her.  Since the one thing Love had always shown him was that, like Life, it found a way.

The process he thoroughly enjoyed arguing with.  Life was an old friend of Time's too.  They played around in the pre-cosmos back before anyone had any names.  They all knew what they where though.  How could they not.  It was always an argument between Life and Time, at what point does one know who they are.

Death once tried to interject, but Life and Love muffled her like a dog.  She looked adorable.  No one wanted to hear the meaning of it all anyways.

Like most dog's though, it didn't matter.  Death was a mute.  The gag was always on them, rhetorically speaking.  She knew she would get silenced, she couldn't kill Time anyways, despite her best efforts.

Not that she cared too, he was a pretty stand up fellow.  How this digressed to Death and Love, only the sands of Time know.  It could of been the beat after all.  Yet we still don't know what caused the melancholy.

It could of been nothing.  It could of been everything.  But it was neither.  It was something else. It was painful.  The pain that had been drawn on from something.  Impossible to figure out, Time contemplated more.  The beat kept changing, as if it would bring back a memory.  How could it, it was all new beats.  The bands he didn't even know how to pronounce their name.  

"Baby, I'm wasted" he heard on his tape deck.  That cool little contraption he kept from that dirty rest stop.  He danced as if he was in a music video.  How could that be anything but a fleeting memory.  His brain had started to play tricks on him.  It had been so long since all these events meant anything.  Why would meaningless events he had thought about mean anything other just Time. 

He sighed, knowing it wasn't going to come from playing fantasy.  But, it was a valiant effort.  Maybe it was change.  Even though that didn't feel right.  It felt like it didn't matter, any of it.  It felt like in the end the game was over before it began.  He had won that Life long argument, but simply had to live it out. 

As if he had a say in it to begin with.  The stupidity of it all made him smile.  Time knew only one thing for sure.  That if he hasn't experienced it yet it's just cause he hasn't cared too.  He had witnessed the first molecule ever form.  He even chatted with it, gave it a nick name, Nemp.  Like History, Time could observe himself in all his prior forms.  Time couldn't change anything though, he could simply see how he shaped that moment.

He knew the effects each of those had.  Not all where perfect, and he frowns to that thought.  Maybe he can chalk it up to the humanity he experienced.  It stuck to him like a memory you can never shake.  It imprinted itself as most of humanity has, by force.  Touching even the fabric of Time.

Reaching for something, despite the impossibility of it, maybe that's what the memory represents.  But he shrugged off that thought, because he remembered another beach.  One where he met Power in a matter that he never expected too.  On good terms.  Power broke to his quick wit.  It was a good joke.  One he told a few times to his good old buddy, Truth.  Truth always brought a crowd to observe.  It knew it had too, because if he could be shown in the best of light, he would always prevail.  At least that's what his parent's had taught him.  Time didn't know who his parent's where.  None of the basic elements did, except Hydrogen.  But since he always wanted to be number one, he never told anyone.  He didn't want them to make another.

Hydrogen went atomic once when someone got close to finding out who his his parent's where.  Not to say their parent's didn't play a founding role in their formation.  But like most living things at one point they grow up.  Just so happens a lifetime was lived by the time the parents passed away, and the elements never experiencing time never recognized the fleetingness of life and the short amount of time in the relativity that is their existence that their parents lived.  They where always infatuated with the thought of eternity never understanding the consequences.

As if it was as stolen dance.  He was disheveled that day.  He always hated the chore of having to upkeep the rate at which his hair grew.  So he just let it flow.  She was smitten by that dance, which was great because he looked like the beast that day.

Perhaps that's where the story came from anyways.  That stolen dance that writer once observed and wrote down.  As if they would of known what paradise was.  They where just exploring the world in a matter in which nothing mattered, but everything was monumental. 

He couldn't find it.  He just sat there gazing into the abyss, observing the ways in which it is presented.  The peak artistic expression, the part that overwhelms you.  The stillness of the moment as it hangs in limbo, gasping for your recognition or at least its expression.  Because one never really knows if the expression was meant to be recognized.

There is a certain style that he recognizes, maybe it's all something that others feel and they tapped into.  Time could only observe that thought.  Couldn't stop though.  It was a bargaining chip for the future.  One that he knows he will never be able to cash in.  What a weird thing this Life he thought.  Life was the weirdest of the starting bunch.  Everyone was all up in it's business.  Yet it didn't mind.  It use to tell Time about how it had its struggles built in because everyone wanted a piece of him.  He was not opposed to shelling it out, but he always demanded respect that what you took from him.  You could only pay the respect by taking it from him anyways.  Time had wrapped himself in Life. 

He treated Life like blanket of happiness.  He was always in pursuit to gather more of that darn blanket.  In passing he had met a human who mumbled something about towels.  He paid his homage by making his blanked a towel at times.

The thing about Life though, Time thought, was that despite he always being in a state of argument with it.  He knew Life enjoyed it.  There was no other way he could of been treated so well in it.  Plus he loved flirting with Death, which always let Life know he was living it to the extreme.  Time figured if he could get on Death's good side, she might give him a heads up when she's coming for him.  He never knew that Death couldn't kill him anyways.  Nothing could.  He was eternal.  And the fact he never knew it is what made him a stand up fellow.

The Death paradox.