Coming To Terms With The Enemy

       It is often said that time is of the essence.

       Indeed:  As the seconds, minutes, days and years, tumble relentlessly by, the movement of time emerges as a haunting, implacable enemy.  Chasing you from behind.  Catching up even as you seem to run faster. And then leaving you in its dust once more.

          I don’t like that. I never have. 

          I recall, many years ago, as a young journalist, I was dating a very attractive red-headed social worker who I had met while covering the Juvenile Court. She was a joy to be with. One night we drove down to Perkins Beach, a lovely, fairly private place to park to look at the stars, or whatever.

After philosophizing about the beauty of the brightly lit downtown skyline, I put my arm around her and moved close, as though to kiss.  She pulled away. “Too soon”, she whispered through her warm, perhaps passionate breath.

“Finite anxiety” was the problem, she said almost clinically, concerning my move to caress her.  Too frantic. Too focused on time, advised this lovely young Baptist who declared that she believed in reincarnation. For her, time was a friend. For me it was the enemy.  Needless to say that relationship, with its excellent potential, never went anywhere.

Time had taken its toll.

I have often wanted to stop the movement of time.  To make it stand still to force it backwards.  To dispose of it entirely.

          Now that I have moved well into my golden years this intense pursuit of the runaway clock has become much more than an intellectual enterprise.

 I have tried to convince myself that time itself does not actually exist except as the concoction of some Middle Ages scientists who were trying to calculate the movement of the sun around the earth and, after Galileo, the earth around the sun.

         But, as the age of reason progressed, time became almost pervasive. The master, rather than the servant. There was the March of Time weekly feature at the movies, Time Magazine, and of course, Timex watches which “keep on ticking when they take a licking,” as John Cameron Swayze used to say on the radio.

          And, in a way, that was the point. In our frantically time infested 21^st century world, there was no stopping it.  Speed was the hallmark. You can’t stop it. You can’t outwit it, you can’t outrun it. You can’t even slow it down.

          I fantasized one night about booking a westbound flight out of Cleveland to LA, where it is three hours earlier. Then on to Hawaii, another three hours, and then to Guam. I would be nine hours ahead of the game, until, of course, time inevitably catches up with me as I cross the international dateline.

          Another brilliant thought. Create a space craft that moves faster than the speed of sound. I could then eventually catch up with the December 1941 and FDR’s declaration of war, then back to Gettysburg and Lincoln’s short, powerful address. Turning back that persistent pursuit of the clock more than 150 years.

         Recently some scientists in England announced they have discovered that a Neutrino, a particle of matter smaller than a molecule, can now move faster than the speed of light when travelling though a nuclear accelerator.  The first scientifically successful effort to outrun time.  Thus re-stimulating my Back to The Future fantasies.

          I was reminded of all those mental gymnastics last summer when my good companion Margie and I headed for the mineral springs resort in northern New Mexico called Ojo Caliente. The site was allegedly discovered by the Spanish Conquistadors, more than 400 years ago as they frantically searched for the Fountain of Youth. Aha, I thought to myself, I am not the first one to become obsessed with conquering the outrages of time.

          On the final lap of our trip somewhere along the Rio Grand Canyon Gorge I noticed that my unstoppable Timex watch had stopped.  Strange, I thought.  It was less than a year old.  It simply stopped ticking without warning. Ominous.   But I was sure that if worse come to worse I could always check my cell for the time.

         I opened the phone and there was not a sign of life. Nada, nothing, blackness on the screen. It wouldn’t start. Something about the battery.  No phone no time...I got to feeling anxious.

          We arrived at the resort and were assigned to the “historic” hotel section of the resort, circa 1866.  No phone in the room no television.  Was it possible that at least for these precious days I was outwitting time? Stopping in its tracks.

          I was of course deluding myself. But somehow, as we left the marvelous oasis in the desert, I felt surprisingly relaxed about my lifelong enemy.

        Was it the malfunctioning watch?  The magic touch of the masseuse? The Yoga in the Yurt?  The 100 degree mineral water. Who knows?

        As we headed south on I 25 south toward Albuquerque airport I thought to myself, surely we’ll come back next year.And added thoughtlessly,  If I have enough time.

        There I go again.