On the Passing of Time and the Lords Thereof

AS 2009 draws to a close and I look back on more than a month of blogging silence (which smarts more than it ought to, as I vowed at the start of the year to be more diligent), more than anything else I'm left wondering where all the time went. If the speed with which Christmas approaches, arrives, and grows smaller in the mind's rearview is any kind of gauge of the rate at which the rest of the year passed, then 2009 positively flew. And if, in musing on the swiftness of time's arrow, I were to ask myself one of the rhetorical questions Marcus Aurelius posed in his Meditations, "Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?" my instinctive follow-up would be: "Wait, what is it again that I've actually been doing?" All the chaos and hubbub that distracted me from the rapid advance of the calendar pages is just that: a blur of unidentifiable activity.

Regrets? I've had a few. As our impending departure date draws nearer, my intent was to write a series of posts chronicling my experiences with German culture, in particular the recent frustrations and disappointments that led to us setting a departure date in the first place. Those posts haven't materialized, obviously, though there is still a bit of time left. We'll see if the amount of time that remains is enough for me to make good on my intentions. My suspicion—without attempting to be more pessimistic than realistic—is no.

It might also have been a nice exercise to post daily individual reviews of Christmas films in the run-up to the holiday, as I've become quite a connoisseur of the genre over the years, and, given that I would be watching them anyway, doesn't involve setting much extra time aside. But that possibility only struck me belatedly. More precisely, on Christmas Eve. I wouldn't be the first to compile a list of this sort, but those lists don't often delve into much commentary and analysis; and besides, I wouldn't necessarily be aiming to shape my two cents into yet another vapid "best of" catalogue. At any rate, it's something to keep in mind for late 2010, particularly since we will, I hope, be watching said films on a screen larger than my iMac's, and my daughters will be of an age more conducive to gauging their reaction. I say "more conducive," but perhaps it's worth noting that this year the Abominable Snow Monster from the Rudolph the Red–Nosed Reindeer TV Christmas special scared the pants off my eldest, who's two and is otherwise fairly resilient. As a child I always found the sight of him a bit frightening, too, but never in a way that reduced me to tears, fingers plunged into my mouth, feverishly repeating, "Nahnahnahnahnahnah" while taking refuge behind the recliner. Even his eventual defanging and domestication couldn't assuage her.


Seasonal films aside, there have been so many I've wanted to see over the past year but haven't. The Cove, An Education, Man on Wire, Gomorrah, the last two being continued holdovers from 2008. I only got to Moon last night, Up a couple of weeks ago. Same goes for books. Ron Chernow's biography of John D. Rockefeller, Titan, has been propped up on the shelf next to me since August, back when I picked it up at the English bookstore. The box set of 2666, by now yesterday's news in literary circles, is on the bookshelf to my right, waiting for me to finish Suite Française, yesterday's yesterday's news in literary circles. I've had a book review of Imagining India, not to mention CD reviews of Art Tatum & Ben Webster's The Album and Red Garland's The 1956 Trio half-finished for months now. Why not just finish them, if only to get them out the door and off my mind? Vide supra.

That blur of unidentifiable activity, much of which has been directed toward getting ourselves out of Hamburg and over to Spokane, often seems disproportionate to the actual results. We keep saying among ourselves, "There will be more time/space/opportunity/whatever in the new house," yet I suspect that this, at least in part, is only teeth-gritting positive thinking, a consolation to make the current helter skelter seem worthwhile. Our move ought to bring with it many advantages, but the trash will still have to be taken out, meals will still have to be cooked, the place will still have to be dusted and vacuumed, appliances will still go on the fritz at the most inconvenient times, the kids will not instantly warm to the idea of taking their afternoon naps, laundry will still have to be folded, work will still take up quite a bit of time, I will not magically return to full health, and the day will not suddenly have forty-eight leisurely hours. The only way to solve the overarching problem would be to somehow move outside of time itself, but if the recently aired part one of the Doctor Who series finale, The End of Time, is any kind of indicator, such a place would entail bottom-of-the-barrel dialogue, condescendingly melodramatic acting, and hopelessly contrived plots that nevertheless leave you scratching your head. My one solace in all this is that the faster time goes in this world, the sooner Russell T. Davies will hand the reins of Doctor Who over to someone whose creative well hasn't run dry.