Ticking Away

“Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”

What is it to be unstuck in time?

Is it that I’ll be sitting on my desk, in the eve of the night, writing this blog entry, and with a blink suddenly it will be year 2000, and I’ll be at my brother’s first communion sitting in the middle of my parent’s bulgy attires, wearing a cute little blue dress and white stockings, while observing in boredom the heights of the church’s ceiling, wondering why does the virgin seem so sad? And how much longer is this? And then with another blink I’ll be in the year 2010 on a Sunday, 4:00 am, killed by exhaustion, sunk in a bed that hasn’t been made for two weeks, watching Trainspotting for the third time in a row, wondering who the F I am on a Sunday morning, all while my mother is asking me what I had for dinner this evening, and with another blink I’ll be back to answer her: Arroz con pollo?

It must be exhausting to appear in another stage of life without any previous notice. But again, as said in the book “It [time] is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.”

And as a person who always wants what it can’t have, the idea that time doesn’t exist is quite seductive.

That every moment is universal, like another brick is being added to Khafre’s pyramid as I’m writing this blog. That I have already ceased to exist, and posterior generations are doing their thing while I’m thinking about them, all the while the next minute of my life could take place in cradle entertaining myself with some amusing teddy bears, or tomorrow at school asking Mr. Tangen if my blog entries have improved. As said in the book: “All the moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will.”

I would love to be unstuck in time. Then I wouldn’t have to live life, but rather be a spectator of it, like living a constant dream. Then Death wouldn’t be so painful because “…when a person dies he only appears to die.” And I’d probably lose irrational fears of loneliness, death and consequences.

If there’s anything that is close to making be unstuck in time is music.

This song (no kidding) vividly revives a car ride in Villa de Leyva. Details can be spared, the feeling is there.