Night Thoughts: Letters to Love, Time and Death

Night the Second: On Time, Death and Friendship

Time, let us rest in peace. I beg you to allow me to enjoy the sublime joy of being next to my lover, of welcoming the night that ends the day, uninterrupted by the reminder of your presence.

"I'll wait," the messenger of death will say to me, knowing that I am sliding faster towards the inevitable end. You have time on your side, after all.

My lover hushed a deep sigh. She understood time differently than I.

That night, the fire crackled beside us and the last embers glowed with the well-earned respite of a long day. We let our bodies sink into the night as we lay on the floor, head to head and talked of time.

"Listen," she said. There was music floating somewhere above us in the dark room; a solitary tone was suspended in midair. It was hollow and wooden and wavering, a didgeridoo possibly. Another sound swept down and layered over the first, then another. Soon, the air was filled with a wash of synthesized colour, pink and blue and gold. A cacophony rose above us, sound on sound, a tower, ready to topple.

"Can you feel the tension?" she asked.

I said nothing. I only wanted the discord to resolve. I cried for release.

"Wait for it— it will come."

And it did. The first drum beat hit us through the floor. My heart pounded from the shock when a higher, shorter snap of an electronic snare drum followed. Two thumps, two beats in succession and order was established. We had time now, and the world made sense again. The melange of tones and colour that had swirled in chaos and entropy fell into place with the step of the electronic drums. We sighed in redemption. There was rhythm, there was song.

"And so it goes," she said as the music carried us. "The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep. Then came light and dark, day and night. There was evening and there was morning—the first day." 

There was time. 

Why then, was I so obsessed with its passing? In my mind I understood that while time was represented by a line, its scale was not linear; each passing moment becoming a fraction of the previous moment. Time was accelerating, towards death.

"That is because you think time is finite. You have imagined a line with an end, and then relate everything to that end. But, my love, you are measuring something that has no end. Do the seasons end? Does nature end? Does our love end? Time is infinite, it is a cycle, so acceleration cannot possibly exist."

She reached for my hand and pressed it against her chest. I felt the beat of her life, her heart pulsing into my palm. And the rhythm was constant, its tempo unchanging.

Time stood still that night.