In No Time At All

I had an emotional argument with a lady hag tonight. For once I won. Of course, the hag doesn't know that because it just took place in my head. It was an argument that I've had before — many times. I'm actually getting better at it. I should be, for it's based on an incident or two that occurred a long while ago: thirty-six years ago to be pretty darn exact. For whatever reason, the music that is on shuffle mode in my brain still comes to rest on this incident every now and then, all these years later.

When my brain's playlist happens to arrest on that spot, I am transported right back to that episode, just as if I were there again. My emotions are strong, and my argument is intense. Then, I blink, realize where I am, shake my head, and try to go about my current business. It's this sort of thing that causes me to posit that time doesn't really exist. I have been told that physicists disagree with me, but it's my privilege to believe whatever I wish to believe.

Oh, I agree that there's a chronology of events: some things happened in the distant past, some things not quite so long ago, and some in the very recent past. I'll grant you that. But our minds are quite capable of hurtling through what we have come to call years with no trouble at all. And, to me, this makes the concept of time somewhat irrelevant, for in an instant I become a boy, a young man, or even the older me of my imagination. I am none of these things, but I am also all of them.