Lounging in the blur of in-between time

Sometimes when I’m feeling overwhelmed by people and events in general, I’ll get in my time travel machine, and rather than go to another time and place, I’ll jigger the machine’s joy stick so that I’ll go to the in-between place. It’s not not in time. It’s on the outskirts of being somewhere. There’s nothing to see, or any of those other senses. Well, actually there’s a slight tactical feeling because I have to keep that minimal hand shake going with the joy stick.

There’s just less than the bare minimum sense of time, kind of like a whiff. Seconds get elongated like long shadows in the late afternoon. I think less. Much less. The thoughts aren’t sentences like in the time zone. They are much reduced. Like earlier today when I was doing this, my thought was, “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.”

Now and then (it’s impossible to describe this without using a time reference) there’s a subtle movement back in the direction of time, and I’ll see some hazy watercolor blips appear, like a diminished thought of colors. Or I’ll hear the reduced murmur of words, like “wweeaallhh bblllouuhh.” Then I rejigger and back to the tonality of mostly nothing.

When I came back from this mostly timeless occurrence today, everything was enhanced. I was aware of milliseconds going by. It turns out time is noisy. We don’t notice it when we’re always in it, but it’s a loudy. On top of this juicy bit I was dramatically well rested. That’s because time is also exhausting. Time uses our personal currents as its gasoline. Who knew we were fuel!

We work so we can play

My dog Rexy and I got in the rocket ship and took off on our vacation. It had been a busy four months of work and we really needed the time away.

Rexy and I are gold harvesters. Rexy sniffs it out and we both dig. She’s got an amazing nose. We uprooted over 500 pounds. It’s what allowed us to purchase the rocket ship, a lake’s amount of gas, and the snacks.

We shot our way across the solar system until we came to Neptune. We picked the planet because it’s blue. We landed and ventured out for a walk in our space suits. After that long of a trip, you really need to hike it up.

We trekked for a couple of hours, then sat on the edge a crater to take a rest. I pet Rexy’s head. She licked my hand, well tried to. Her tongue brushed the glass of her space helmet.

The Sneeze Attack

I decided to walk by the White House because I love that front lawn. It’s rare to have so much of a yard in a big city.

There were three people out mowing that grass. I also saw a squirrel digging in the ground for nuts it buried months ago. A wren was searching the dirt for worms. Some ants crawled up its leg and the wren tried to shake them off.

I started to sneeze because of the cut grass in the air. I’m allergic. I had a rapid bout of sneezing. My sinuses felt like they were on fire. Someone offered me a Claritin. I took it, but the sneezing continued. I felt like my head was going to explode.

The lengths I go to

I like to time travel visit the illustrious and well known when they were doing things for which they were not well known. Perhaps I do this because it helps me feel okay about my day to day general ordinariness. For instance, I time traveled to 1854, Galena, Illinois, to Braghner’s General Store, midday, so that I could grocery shop at the same time as Ulysses S. Grant. Ah, the peace of mind as I saw that we both has sassafras bark in our shopping baskets.

Today I got in my time travel machine and ventured to 1857, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and the home of the famous author of Moby Dick, Herman Melville. Dressed in my coveralls, and carrying a satchel of tools, I was greeted at the front door by Melville’s wife, Elizabeth. I pretended I was there to plane the doors. Back then, most doors were improperly placed and fastened to doorjams, resulting in their regularly getting stuck when shut. Sometimes a person living by themselves would accidentally be trapped in a room by a door holding fast, only to be discovered months later as a skeleton gripping the door handle with both hands, by a visiting relative.

I had planed a number of doors in the Melville home, when I came upon the door to Herman’s study. He was within, but not writing at his desk. Instead he was sitting on the floor, whittling a piece of birch, his tongue jutting out the right side of his mouth. He nodded at me. I nodded back.

I planed as he whittled. I was so entirely absorbed in watching his whittling, that I lost track of my own progress, and realized I had planed the door all the way down to the doorknob. I stood like a fool amidst three feet of wood shavings.

I interrupted Mr. Melville to note and apologize for my dubious workmanship. He took notice and said, “It was once a tree. Perhaps it was through being a door.”

My life as a conquistador

It was cloudy, raining, and cold when I woke up this morning. I hate foul weather. So I changed into my workman’s coveralls (ideal for time travel because folks from all periods of history are always accepting of someone who can fix things) and I hopped into the time travel machine. I zipped off to April 2, 1513 and the coast of St. Augustine, Florida.

Ah, the sunshine and warmth greeted me in full. And it wasn’t during those unbearable humid and muggy months. Plus it was far enough into the past that I didn’t have to deal with loathsome tourists besieging the beach.

I pranced around on the sand, extolling the Sun about its rayful wonders, when I noticed three great sailing ships just off the coast, and a smaller boat approaching the shore. I squinted and noticed the small boat was filled with conquistadors. Sure, they were a brutal folk, known for genocide, mayhem and the spreading of disease, but when I was five, I wanted to be one.

I had a poster of conquistadors on my bedroom wall. My parents got it for me because I had a self-confidence problem. I used to go up to bullies in the school yard and ask them to throw my school books on the ground and then beat me up. They obliged and it made me feel special and liked. After I got the poster, I would spend hours gazing at it, emulating the eminence and strong posture of the Spanish conquerors on the beach.

I took that attitude to school one morning. With full gall I went up to the bullies and chest-bumped them. They saw in me a kindred spirit. I suggested we form a gang. They took me up on it, and we proceeded to relinquish students of their lunch money as they came into the school. That was until Principal Jipper intervened. He broke up the gang, and as I was considered the leader, I had to appear in Juvenile Court, and was subsequently sentenced to spend six months at Allworths’ Reformatory for the Criminally Promising.

At Allworths, rehabilitation was brought about by having the young malcontents work long hard hours at its in-house Bromine reclamation plant. From sun-up to nightfall, me and 700 or so jackanapes would pound mounds of seaweed with rubber mallets, causing the bromine minerals to loosen and fall through the grates, into the collecting vats below.

As I stood on the shore of the beach of St. Augustine, the surf splashed over my feet, which became entangled with seaweed. I reached down and tried to pull myself free, but to no avail. I looked up to see the boat with the conquistadors had almost reached the shore. The Spanish soldiers eyed me with bad intent. I sighed and remembered an inspirational quote on a poster at the reclamation plant. It was from Antoine Jérôme Balard, the discoverer of Bromine. It said, “I did not discover bromine, rather bromine discovered me.”

 

The Night Tremor

The other night I was laying in bed, feeling drowsy, when I heard a whispered, “Are you asleep?”

I said, “No. Who is this?”

The whisper said, “It’s time.”

I said, “Time for what?”

The whisper said, “No, I’m Time.”

I said, “Oh, I’m sorry…I’m Brooks.”

The whisper said, “I know. I’m very familiar with you.”

I said, “How’s that?”

The whisper said, “Because of your constant time traveling. You travel in my under layers. It’s extremely intimate.”

I sat up and said, “Tell me more.”

The whisper said, “Normally people are in the moment. It’s like a container. A container that I hold. They are in the container. But when you time travel, you step out of the container. You move to my hand. I can feel you on my skin. It tickles and its sexy. You are only there briefly. Then you move back into the container, but to a different place in the container. Because of our quick but memorable interaction, I think about you. A lot.”

I said, “Are you actually here now? Or are you speaking through the walls of the container?”

The whisper said, “I’m here, in the room.”

I said, “I’m gonna turn on the light.”

The whisper said, “No. Don’t. Stay where you are.”

I said, “But I want to see you.”

The whisper said, “You can’t. I’m not visible. I’m a feeling. Like a tremor in the ether.”

I lay back down. I sensed.

The whisper let out a slight, “Wooh.”

I said, “I felt your quiver.”

The whisper said, “You most certainly did.”