Thoughts on Time
How do you visualise time? More specifically, how do you visualise the calendar months? In a line, left to right, with January at one end and December at the other? A grid, perhaps, as can be found on commercial calendars, with January, February, March in the first row; April, May and June in the second, and so forth?
Mine is a like a clockface but a slightly weird and distorted one. The top half is made up of a nicely shaped semi-circle: the bottom half, not so much. The arc is shallow and elongated, somehow. I often wonder how it formed: why I see the year rolling around in this way. There’s some sense to it – twelve numbers on a clockface, twelve months of the year. Except the placement is wrong: very wrong, in fact. Even the start and finish points are not where you’d expect them to be. Allow me to explain.
To begin with, my calendar clock runs anti-clockwise! Good start! January sits at about 8.30 and all three (northern hemisphere) months of winter/spring – January, February and March - squash themselves between 8.30 and almost 6 o’clock. 6 o’clock is taken by April, followed May, June, July and August who spread themselves out to almost 3 o’clock. September sits firmly at 3 o’clock and the remaining autumn/winter months have the whole of the rest of the half circle - 180 degrees or six hours, if you see what I mean - back to December which occupies 9 o’clock. Just to be clear, nine months of the year are forced into the space made for six, with the remaining three months luxuriating in an abundance of time. It’s like plane travel – January to March are stuck in economy; April to August enjoy business class; and September to December are at the pointy end, champagne flute in hand.
How does such an image shape my view of the passing year? Do the inequities matter? Did I long for the winter months that follow December to pass quickly, within the equivalent of ninety minutes, only to find myself disappointed as they dragged their cold and miserable feet towards the end of spring and summer? Did the summer months feel long and luxurious because I gave them more than their fair share? How hard would it have been for me, as a child, to wait for Christmas Day? My calendar clock would say it took half a year from my birthday in September. My relationship with Christmas has always been difficult – too much anticipation, not enough substance. Does this help explain the sense of letdown, the ambivalence?
In some ways, I’m fond of the quirkiness and cherish what my mind’s eye has conjured - this backwards jumble of rule-breaking, clockface allocations. I don’t have many other examples: I’m not known for my eccentricities. Lamentably, I display far too many of the traits of my star sign - the sensible Virgo with a penchant for tidiness bordering on psychopathy. So it’s nice to have a peculiarity that jars spectacularly with other people’s expectations, and is surely only mine. I can’t imagine it recurring in anyone’s else’s brain.
Actually, ‘fondness’ is an artifice: I love its unruliness, its non-compliance. And don’t we all enjoy the occasional display of waywardness? Let’s celebrate our differences and …
Stuff that under your nun’s habit, Virgo!