expansion

I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately, and how it seems to expand and contract so readily. Just like a watched pot never boils, a watched clock – for instance on a four hour airplane flight – only moves forward by one minute at each glance. And yet suddenly, the trip is over and the memory of the interminable minutes fades as quickly as the discomfort of trying to hold oneself into the micro-seats and not hog the armrest.

I drove to Seward from Fairbanks and back again, a nine hour drive one-way on a perfect day with no traffic or construction. However there was a lot of construction this year, especially around Denali – which added approximately two hours to the trip between slowed traffic and wait times. I broke up the drive on the way down, camping south of the park at a little campground by a lake that I’d passed dozens of times but never stopped in. It was raining, and the campground was nearly full – mostly of RVs – even in the middle of the week. I had been struggling to stay awake, and decided at the last moment to spring for a campsite instead of just sleeping in the back of my truck on the side of the road as I’d planned to do. I’m just getting too old for that, plus I figured I’d sleep better without trucks flying by inches from my head all night. The next day, the relatively short jaunt down to Anchorage seemed to take forever, and every time I glanced at the clock only a few minutes had gone by. By the time I was an hour away, I was frantic to pull over and take a break and ended up calling a friend to see if she could meet for lunch last-minute, instead of pushing on to Seward. I just couldn’t stand the thought of one more insanely long minute in the truck.

And just as suddenly, in my memory, I was in Seward, with the long two-day drive behind me. And without a second thought of having to repeat it in a few days. The drive back was just as much of rubber band, and I remember being so frustrated that the miles weren’t passing. I felt like a hamster in a wheel on that highway, and yet, just as suddenly, I was at the Parks Monument and then back in town and it was over with.

I know Radiolab did a piece on the expansion and contraction of time a few years ago, and I remember listening to it while I was running dogs in Goldstream. (Radiolab is fantastic for passing the time on long mushing runs!) It’s been years, and I don’t remember the crux of the piece, but I do remember a discussion of the phenomenon of one’s life passing before one’s eyes during a near-death experience. The expansion of those few seconds, and all the thoughts that can be contained in them, is in some ways beyond comprehension. And yet it is a common enough experience that the idea has its own phrase. The mind seems to be able to take time and bend it to its will (although that will may not be *our* will in moments that seem to stretch on).

The last three years in Iowa have passed slowly, and I can remember clearly sitting on the couch in Mason counting minutes as they went by. And yet those three years are gone, now seemingly in a blink. And yet somehow each minute was sixty seconds long, just like the last. I don’t feel like I’m writing very articulately about all this at the moment. But it’s been on my mind so much. I still have nearly two years of this program to pound out, and the future of being in school for that long seems almost incomprehensible. I was in Alaska for the last eleven days, and anticipated that trip with an intensity that I cannot put into words here.  The wait felt impossibly long. And now, a day from coming home, that time seems to have passed in a nanosecond.

How can I spend my time, these minutes and seconds that pass uniformly and yet expand and contract at will during their passing in in my anticipation and memory, well and fully. How can I be in the moment, even those moments that I don’t want to last, or the ones that pass too quickly, without wishing those moments away?