Lately, I have noticed how much closer time is getting. When I was small, time was slow. The year crawled forward like a small child not yet ready to walk.
Moving from one grade up to the next seemed to take forever and adulthood was so far in the distance it seemed almost unreachable.
Not any more.
This year of 2009 is already a third of the way through and yet, it seems as if it has only just started. I have always sensed that this new relationship with time had to do somehow with getting older. That perhaps, one felt more urgently the pressing down of time with each passing year.
But I have asked around! Time is everywhere. It rests heavily, even on the young. Life is speeding up in a way that is startling and new. I can't help feeling that it is saying something important to us as it advances. It is as if with each passing day something significant is shrinking in the universe.
They say that time is mere illusion. Beyond our human smallness lies a realm unlimited by the clockface. Here then, now it is all the more necessary to meet Time halfway so that you find yourself at least almost there, before it is over.
A long time ago a wise teacher of mine once wrote on the blackboard, a quote by Marvel. 'And at my back I always hear, Time's winged chariot hurrying near'. She was concerned with the accent on winged which allowed for iambic pentameter, I was more taken with the image of Time as it swept up from behind.
With Time's breath almost touching my shoulder I am hard pressed not to begin something new each day...