Time Warp
Pandemic Papers — April 9, 2020
If you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll let you in on this weird little habit of mine.
Every time I’m running late to a class, a meeting, a wedding, a funeral — to pretty much every appointment in my life — I start imagining that if I will it hard enough, I can make time stand still for others. The clock on my phone will freeze at 9:57 am, the arms of the clever, R-wave clock in the kitchen will stop in their sweep. The other classmates will freeze in their cars until I get there too. The teacher will stand in the kitchen, feet glued to the ground, her cup of tea mid-pour. The cars on the freeway will all stop — all except for mine, of course — and the lane ahead of me will open up as I make up my 10-minute delay.
Despite the evidence otherwise, I’m pretty sure I haven’t lost my mind — wait on that for a few more months of lockdown — but somehow, I return time and again to this magical thinking, never letting the feeble laws of physics get in my way. And I’m not alone. Anyone who has talked books with me knows that one of my all-time favorites is Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. In this charming, brilliant little book, a young Einstein dreams of the various ways that time could move. Each chapter offers up a different scenario — it moves in circles, it moves in starts and stops, even backwards. In one chapter, it moves at different speeds…
