(From Jach): (Colombia #4): Time passes quietly, slipping past me almost without notice. Sometimes it whispers but mostly time here in Colombia is silent. The boundaries blur from one hour to the next, from one day to the next. Sometimes those boundaries disappear. Time also mocks me. It laughs at my frustration with and my anger at it. I respond in less than admirable ways. Time is very different here. I’ve written about it before. For me, time in the States is neatly linear and it’s very nicely organized, and it’s punctual. For me, time is a series of minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months. As much as I live in the present I also have an eye on the horizon. I keep an eye on what’s coming. With my work, I feel it’s important even necessary to be very conscious of time and its precise linear nature. I work with time for scheduling events, planning activities, engaging in a social life, handling responsibilities, and “being there and being where” I’m supposed to be. In Colombia, and maybe in most, if not all, Latin American countries, time is also linear, but doesn’t seem to be measured in minutes, hours, and days. Rather, it seems to be measured in moments. Colombians don’t seem to move from one hour to the next, they seem to move from one moment to the next moment. A specific moment could end in minutes, or it could end in hours. I suppose a moment could even last a day or more. My point is: Time here is not measured in the ways that I am used to measuring it. It’s measured, if it’s measured at all, in moments. Further, no one seems to know (or cares to know) when a moment — when this moment — began, and certainly no Colombian would attempt to suggest when this moment will end. It will end when it does. Then there will be another moment. So time passes often without notice. Time passes quietly, nonchalantly and it seems to shrug its shoulders when I try to demand more of it. The difference in time’s behavior does frustrate and sometimes it angers me. Yet, in the next moment, it enchants me. In those enchanting moments, time’s whispers and silences are seductive. I yearn for a future where I can dance with time from one moment to the next without regard for minutes and hours. I am getting there slowly. Enrique and I have been here over a week now. That’s hard to believe. I just counted on my fingers: this is the 10th full day that we’ve been here. And I had to remind myself that it’s Saturday. I was going to take off my watch for the entire weekend, but it’s still on my wrist. As eager as I am to live in “moment time,” I still wrestle with it. I still try to make it conform to my version of linear time. As I say, it mocks me. It laughs at me. Our new refrigerator was scheduled for delivery and installation on Thursday, the 15th — the first full day after we arrived. It was keenly scheduled with forethought in hours and days. Oh yes, we were told, both the delivery guy and the installer would arrive by noon. However, the refrigerator was finally delivered Saturday afternoon and the installer showed up sometime Monday afternoon. Late for the appointed time. Setting up this new apartment involved a number of workmen coming to handle this and that. Each called to set up an appointment. None of them arrived in any proximity of being “on time.” That’s just the way it is. There is no point in asking, “Why are you late?” It’s not that the answer will be an excuse, it’s that most likely there won’t be an answer at all. Instead the workman will have a puzzled look as if he didn’t understand the question and reply, “What do you need me to do?” I wrestle with time and rail against it. Finally I take a breath and remind myself that it’s different here. I also remind myself that the job gets done no matter how much time it takes. It gets done in the moment no matter how long that moment is. The workman does what’s needed without regard for minutes and hours and without regard for his next appointment. I had wondered why I was creating this reality of so many workmen and all of them showing up late, late by hours or by days. I wondered why I was creating so much struggle around being here. Then it occurred to me. I have come to Colombia, and in the future, Enrique and I look to spend a good share of each year here. We want to divide our time between Santa Barbara and Cali (Colombia). I love this country and its people. I love the resonance. I marvel at the smallest things and the larger ones too. I also love the quiet passing of time. I love that I don’t immediately know what time it is or what day it is. So I come here to learn and to live in this resonance with this lifestyle. Yet, here I am wrestling with time trying to make it fit into my American pigeonholes. I want to be here, and at the same time I am trying to make “here” be just like “there.” Time is quiet and passes with whispers and silences. It is also stubborn. It won’t fit into my rigors or into my pigeonholes. As I forgive myself for my stubbornness and renewing my commitment to myself, my future, and to my future self, a delightful sense of peace, a sense of dominion, comes over me. Things don’t suddenly happen on time. Time doesn’t change; I do. Things happen when they do and I work to be in the moment with it all. So I give up. I am ending the wrestling match and I am climbing out of the ring or getting off the game board. It’s difficult for me to let go of hours and to instead embrace moments. It’s also fun. When I am somewhere in the liminal between “hour time” and “moment time” waiting on something or for someone, I pick up my book and I read. I smile as I write this. Part of my future dream is to be able to sit and read and read and read some more. When I stop wrestling with time, I have . . . time. I have time to read, to take a step toward the future I dream of having. Over the last several days, we have been living a daily routine . . . running errands, going grocery shopping, going to the cinema, have lunch with family, and just being at home with each other and Sebastian. I’ve been reading, thinking, a beginning to write a bit. There is nothing startling or thrilling to report. Or maybe this is thrilling enough for me and thank you for allowing me to share it with you. More to follow sometime. Maybe sometime soon . . . when the moment comes.
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 23:33:55 +0000
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