Perhaps the greatest commonality in this existence is what we call “time.” And, for the imperfectly punctual, such as myself, time is endlessly perplexing.
So what is this thing, the clock on the wall? In my studies the best account I can give is that time is the co-occurrence of events, the movement of existence.
Movement, of course, is change. Change is constant. Change is time.
Many find change challenging. We reach for security, try to stake down the tents of our lives with artifices of our own manufacture. But this is not the way. Let that meager structure fly away, lay in the grass. Look up at the stars. To us, they are timeless.
What does it mean when we refer to something as ‘timeless’? This is a place or a work that seems to have escaped Chronos’ coils. Kyoto is timeless. The Golden Pavilion, even though it was once burned to the ground and rebuilt, although it displaces air and obeys the same physical laws as you or I, is timeless. In a fundamental (and ineffable) way, it is beyond. Perhaps this is why, even in Kyoto, I long for Kyoto.
Hamlet, although always tied to a time and a place — Elizabethan England (or the titular prince’s Denmark) — is fundamentally timeless. It is extant somewhere outside of this existence. Many of his Sonnets, and I’m borrowing from Adler’s indispensable How to Read a Book, which you really should read, relate to what the poet calls “devouring time.”
When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age
…
Ruin has thus taught me to ruminate
That time will come and take my love away.
Shakespeare, “Sonnet 64″
The limbs of the clock disfigure the rich, destruction teaches that time will take away the beloved.
My favorite poem of Poe’s is called “The Conqueror Worm,” and I’d really love for you to read it aloud to yourself before continuing, hear the Baltimorean’s dark music. Angels, men, all are to be corpses, we will all fall to time, to the conqueror worm. To most anyone this is terrifying. With every step, the worm approaches.
Here in Korea, we have become a prime destination for medical tourism (an odd pairing of adjective and noun). We have a wealthy neighborhood known for its plastic prowess, Apgujeong in Gangnam. Before-and-after advertisements cover subway station walls. This too perplexed me.
I teach a remarkable class of young men and women at my school, to whom I spill my mind every Saturday. (Yesterday we had a close listening on Mozart; one student imagined hundreds ballerinas dancing on violin strings when she heard this. Maybe you could listen to it while reading. That would be nice.) Struck by the prevalence of plastic surgery, I brought my adventures in Apgujeong up to them. We read a Wall Street Journal article about a new wellness spa. I think Ponce de León might be a member.
I was struck by the step-by-step rhetoric of Suzanne Somers: “Everyone is going to age. No one has a plan. But Dr. Cha has a plan.” A plan (read: cure) for aging. I sense so much fear in this. So I asked my students, why would people pay $10,000 to push away age, to push away time?
Jill, who in her 15 years has more insight than most, said that such an outlook is foolish and miserable, that there is no way to avoid age. She wrote that we must accept age. We should enjoy the fruits of growing old, like wisdom. I was very careful to listen to her.
In twelve days, I turn 24 years old, and, for the third time, I am not so excited about my birthday. I am growing older. I refer to myself as a man, not a boy. Crows are beginning to stamp their feet around my eyes. Perhaps it is the hubris of my youth that allows me to judge those who cling to their beauty. But we must be with what is, we must love what we are. And, in that spirit, I seek to love every wrinkle that forms upon my face.
We must embrace age. We are mortals. Johan says the gods are jealous of us for this, that we end. Let it end. You cannot put it in a bottle.
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and
can be none in the future,
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn’d to
beautiful results,
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death
-Whitman, “Starting from Paumanok“
This is what time implies: Death. In every moment, we age; One day, we will die. Like Mitch Hedberg says, every picture is from when you were younger.
But why does it have to be like this? Why must time destroy, why must we mourn, does it not also create, can we not also celebrate? Like so much else, this has something to do with attitude. According to Dōgen, founder of Sōtō Zen, enlightenment is being with things as they truly are. One moment of enlightenment dissolves into the next. Let us truly be with what is, both within and without ourselves, if those categories even truly exist. This is what we mean we when say we just want to be.
This is the magic of the present tense. The past is immutable, it is cement; this present is the sweetest clay you could ever encounter. Rub it all over yourself. Get it between your toes.
In two months I will leave this land that has nourished me, where I have become a man. I depart not for external obligation, but internal. I know that somewhere beyond here I will stumble into more of myself.
This breaks my heart. I am superfluously blessed. I have the greatest friends here that I could ever ask for, work that fulfills me, and a neighborhood that will forever be home. But I cannot put it in a bottle.
Johan often quotes me a Swedish saying, “leave while the party is good.” From Korea I will go to China, to Vietnam, to points beyond. I will change. This time, I rejoice. I rejoice in this time.
Nietzsche said that art is man’s attempt to become immortal, and it certainly is his best. Rumi, though he whirled through this plane 800 years ago, is alive in my heart and on my tongue. This, then, is it: art can be a vessel, and we can set this time and ourselves into the sea of eternity though our paintings, our poems, our passions.
We create so much sadness for ourselves when we put pressure on reality, when we stack mounds of modals — should, would, could — on what beautifully is. Time is. The present is. Life is. Death is. We are.
Annyeoung and aloha,
Drake
<3.
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