Today’s meditation is on the subject of time. How it fluctuates and how, alas, it cannot stand still. The true Faustian bargain is based on time, on freezing one perfect moment. Faust agrees to sell his soul for the experience of perfection. I particularly love his words in the Italian of Boito’s version (Mefistofele): “Arrestati, sei bello!” Which could be roughly translated as “Stop right here—this is it!”
Sometimes time does slow down. Adrenaline affects the perception of time. I have stood on the stage of Woolsey Hall in New Haven, singing “When Sunny Gets Blue” with the Whiffenpoofs backing me up, and felt time slow to a crawl: 2 and 1/2 minutes of being in exactly my right place in the universe and too totally present even to think about what the moment after might feel like. Life can be full of experiences like that. Or they might be rare. They are precious and hopefully do not involve bargaining away one’s soul.
Sometimes time slows down in an opposite way. Tedium. Boredom. “Are we there yet?” And Douglas Adams’s “Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul.” Waiting. Which can be agonizing when it’s a child a week before Christmas or anyone who just had a scary medical test.
I just dropped my younger child (adult, seriously, 26 and 1/2!) off at the train. And I sighed. There have been so many times when, in retrospect, it would have been lovely to freeze-frame my life. Arrestati, sei bello! It is fitting and proper that my children should grow up and go out into the world and have lives of their own. And having them around for visits may emphasize the sweetness while avoiding the tedium of living together. But the evanescence of those perfect moments leaves an ache. Time settles back into its normal groove.
Attachment. I know. Letting go. I know.
And I don’t.
This was me, at my reunion in 2010. Since then I lost a lot of weight—and my voice. Time does not stand still.