time, as a symptom

On rainwater, obsession, and sleeping through your youth.

In Joanna Newsom’s ‘Time, as a Symptom’, she opens the song with this verse:

“Time passed hard

And the task was the hardest thing she'd ever do

But she forgot

The moment she saw you”

At my childhood home, my Dad leaves a barrel outside to collect rainwater. He uses it to water the plants and to top up the cat’s drink. He’s been doing this for quite some time, and it never seems to deplete too much. Time is kind to our barrel of rainwater, always brimming with whatever the clouds were willing to give it. 

When I lived back with my family, I took a lot of transportive rest because there was not much else to do. The walls held so much noise and the hurt of a scorn 20 something who desperately needed to move on, so I would let my body travel from one hour to the next. Visiting home after leaving my residence there, I would find myself much smaller. The barrel would still be full, and my bed would still be a time-machine.

I’ve never really liked imagining the nebulous idea of a ‘future’ because I’ve never been someone who can visualise with any sort of ease to begin with, so it always felt like a hopeless endeavour. I was setting myself up for existential failure, really. 

I never imagined where I would live when I eventually moved out of Essex, but I could picture orange. I could picture kitsch, clutter, and safety. I didn’t think about the strain and ache and I didn’t think about a concrete future where I had permanent dwellings. It was all ambient. I’ve always lived in currents, in permanents, in the fear that I’d swallow myself alive if I let me, so there wasn’t much time to have a life outside of the next hour or even the next 10 minutes. 

When you suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you’re your own boogieman. What you could be, what you could truly turn into if you’re not careful, that’s the horror. An infection of the self, how could such a monster deserve tomorrow, or the next day?

With the blankets under my nose, I’d fast forward through the dread and hope that I’d forgotten enough to get on with my day whenever I would eventually come back to life. The 5 minutes of gelatinous bliss before I’d realised where I’d last been mentally were always glorious enough for me to consider going right back to sleep. 

How can you die for a short enough time to feel it? How can you express and delve into the central numbness of apathy before realising it’s time to go home?

My nan asks me to fill up the watering can with water from the rain barrel. I let my skin get damp as I push the plastic into the barrel, fill the can and bring it to the flower beds. My family aren’t particularly eco friendly in many other ways but I appreciate that I don’t have to source more water from another place before feeding the plants. 

I don’t know where I’m going because time eludes me. I have no sense of it. I’m always late and I’m regularly waking for work 5 minutes before I need to log-on. I’m not a barrel of rainwater, eternally and permanently full. If I went home right now and sunk myself into the barrel, I’d probably be able to dip under the waterline and blow bubbles.

I’m realising now that I’ve probably not explained my use of a Joanna Newsom lyric to open this piece. It might even seem a bit gratuitous, and that’s because it really is, but it’s also a disguise. I hide in my sleep and my music and I travel through sound waves and time boundaries and I do not humour tomorrow, for tomorrow is the hardest thing I’ll ever do. 

I close my eyes and I open them and it’s 10 PM and tomorrow I will get out of bed and I’ll wash my face and then time will be a symptom of my anger. 

I close my eyes and I open them and it’s 6 PM and I have to slot into a tube carriage and waste time, a symptom of life.

I’m scared of time. Maybe that’s the secret. I’m scared of death and dying and I’m scared of not being able to experience time anymore. If there’s any sort of morality to my story, it would be to not indulge in wasting too much time, but I’ll leave it open ended. Like a good nap, I’m not sure when I’ll wake up from my own delusions of the world eating me alive. 

I’ll set an alarm, just in case.