Timing

Today, I read an article (sorry, it's only an abstract online unless you're a subscriber...) in the most recent issue of The New Yorker about Christian Marclay, an artist who created a 24-hour video collage illustrating each minute with a visual and audio reference taken from different movies. He called it "The Clock." It was a colossal work, and one the results of which I'd love to see in person.

And the point--or rather one of the points--of the work was to draw the viewer's attention to how much attention we give to time; to reverse the standard tendency to lose track of time in the watching of a movie and to rather accentuate precisely how much time you have irrevocably lost from watching. In explaining this, the author of the article mentions that, ordinarily, people look at a clock in order to bind themselves more closely to an ironclad schedule; the act of looking at a clock, he says, is often accompanied by worry and apprehension.

I found this particularly telling as a descriptor of my day today. While I looked at the clock significantly less than on a usual day--it was a Sunday, after all, so I had no ironclad schedule to adhere to--I have rarely been more aware of the absolute and stringent rule of time, and timing, over my life.

I wrote a few days ago about the choices I face in my life going forward; what I failed to mention, though, was the absolute and unknowable time lines that guide each choice. Today, I felt the full weight of these. I spent several hours perusing various job boards, drooling over the eight or so positions currently open for which I may actually be qualified, yet with the full knowledge that I can't apply for them. (To make myself feel better I amped up my resume, but it's just not the same if it's still just stored on you computer.)

I know, logically, that four months is far too long to expect anyone to keep a job for me. I know that looking at jobs now will do little more than depress me that all the great jobs I see now will never be mine because they will be long filled by the time I can apply. Yet I can't shake the time-illogical sense that I should still look, now, just in case. Sigh.

Then there's the issue of travel. I'm looking at taking a little trip before heading back to America in July, and I've been monitoring flight prices for a few weeks now, hoping they'll go down around the (supposedly) magical 2-month-out point. Instead, I checked today to discover that the heretofore frontrunner in cheapness had sold out, apparently leaving me with an unaffordable $700USD hike in prices. Talk about discouraging.

I later found more flights that are at least in the same arena as my previous low price, but I'm now stuck in an unknowable conundrum of timing: should I buy now, and so avoid the possibility of more sell-outs, or hold out in expectations that prices will drop? I don't know, and have no way of knowing, yet if I make the wrong choice, I may find myself unable to afford the journey. Again, sigh.

Whether we pay attention to it or not, time rules our lives. And somehow, even on the day that I give it least heed, timing rules mine. I can watch the second hand move or smash the clock and look away, but either way, my life is being eaten by it as surely as those of the movie-goers in "The Clock." Now the question is what to do with my time until the minute hand moves forward to the next scene.