“It is in order to give rise to a complex instant, brimming with simultaneities, that a poet shatters the simple continuity of shackled time.”
These ideas float to the surface when I read Gaston Bachelard’s writings in “Intuition of the Instant.”
We live on horizontal time, consequential, measured, narrative. But we experience life on the axis of vertical time, where each instant brims with the depth of poetic possibility.
A layer cake of experience.
Time casts it spell on you
But you won’t forget me
I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me!
In this moment, my head aches, my eyes are wet with waking, a black ponytail holder tied around my middle finger, caught up in the silver ring.
I pick at my scar, the one I made from scratching too hard and too long.
A tear rolls down my cheeks, not from sadness, but from a bad night of sleep.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
In this moment, my gold bracelets jangle at my wrists. The ones my mother insisted I stole from her at the nursing home. I had to tell a police officer she gave them to me the night before, when the meds had worn off and she remembered me.
In this moment, my stomach fat rolls over the lip of my tired black underwear. I’m aware of how I sit with one leg crossed at the knee of the other, feet hidden under the desk.
In this moment, the fan whirs, the sun paws at the windows, the low engine of the day hums just outside the house.
I can break into song this morning, or I can take a shower.
Stay hydrated or deflated.
The astrologers have sounded the alarm—it’s a good day to plant seeds that will grow into the vertical timeline of existence—upwards toward the heavens or deep down into the dirt, expansion.
If you want to sing out, sing out.
If you want to be free, be free.
There’s a million ways to be,
You know that there are.
- Continuity is a habit constructed through memories.
- Facts are acts.
- An accident lies at the root of every evolutionary attempt.
These ideas float to the surface when I read Gaston Bachelard’s writings in “Intuition of the Instant.”
We live on horizontal time, consequential, measured, narrative. But we experience life on the axis of vertical time, where each instant brims with the depth of poetic possibility.
A layer cake of experience.
Time casts it spell on you
But you won’t forget me
I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me!
In this moment, my head aches, my eyes are wet with waking, a black ponytail holder tied around my middle finger, caught up in the silver ring.
I pick at my scar, the one I made from scratching too hard and too long.
A tear rolls down my cheeks, not from sadness, but from a bad night of sleep.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
In this moment, my gold bracelets jangle at my wrists. The ones my mother insisted I stole from her at the nursing home. I had to tell a police officer she gave them to me the night before, when the meds had worn off and she remembered me.
In this moment, my stomach fat rolls over the lip of my tired black underwear. I’m aware of how I sit with one leg crossed at the knee of the other, feet hidden under the desk.
In this moment, the fan whirs, the sun paws at the windows, the low engine of the day hums just outside the house.
I can break into song this morning, or I can take a shower.
Stay hydrated or deflated.
The astrologers have sounded the alarm—it’s a good day to plant seeds that will grow into the vertical timeline of existence—upwards toward the heavens or deep down into the dirt, expansion.
If you want to sing out, sing out.
If you want to be free, be free.
There’s a million ways to be,
You know that there are.
