Skip to main content

Time

There have been times in my life that have moved slowly, perhaps for good or bad. But now, nothing moves slowly. When I contemplate how little has altered for me in one year, I'm staggered. Soon, all too soon, it will have been an entire year since I have worked at Mary Kay, Inc., and yet it feels like just a couple of months. Days, weeks spin by at staggering pace. I remember something that happened to me, and I'll realize that months have passed since the event. I'll scan over my diary only to find that weeks have passed since I wrote in it, when I was sure it was only a few days ago.

The feeling grows stronger with each passing day: it is near-insurmountable now, so that I am driven to find a way to slow the passage of time. It is almost supernatural, as though I'm on a legended fairy island where I'm being cheated of my life: while five minutes of my revelry passes, it has really been five years, and my very life is slipping through my fingers like sand. I know my metaphors are extreme, but even these fall short of the passion I feel about this tragedy.

I have heard this so many times, where life rushes by faster and faster until you reach its end. There are two ways my life might end (barring the unexpected): I might find a peaceful, beautiful place where I have nothing to do but write, and when I imagine the end it seems like the sun slowly coming up and consuming me in warmth. The alternative is that I go as I am now: I watch myself changing in the mirror, wondering at time's onslaught; I watch the seasons change one into the other without my herald; days flow by and despite my struggles I don't do as I intend, and soon it's all gone, and I'm left with nothing in my hands at the end.

Anyway, I can think of no way to solve this problem, but to recognize it, to detail it as well as I can, and to lament it seems like the best thing to do now. I have found repeatedly that identifying a problem and my feelings about it is almost in itself a solution.

It may not be enough now. I would willingly change anything to make this whirlwind stop, but right now I don't know what to make different. While I haven't yet succeeded, I have come close to perfecting our home, to bettering my appearance, and my demeanor, to using my time as wisely as I can, the last of which is far from ideal.

Popular posts from this blog

The secret to a happy home

I finished Marion Harland's guide tonight and I wonder ceaselessly at two things. 1. She is so down on America! Even more than I am. She complains of things in which I am so well-steeped I could not see them for what they were. In particular, American style and cookery. It is true that our food, which we count as so much more generous in portion than the overseas counterpart, is as coarse and indecorous as it is plentiful, but as an American woman I cast up my hands and declare I would rather spend my time on something else. She makes an interesting point about American women's fashions. In France women wear what looks good on them, and in America women wears what comes off the manufacturing line in the latest style. It is very conformist, and I have to admit I feel it in myself, for I would be embarrassed to wear something that is "out" even if it flattered me better. 2. Harland's other point I feel clearly from last night's experiences. I looked in my journ...

Blanche, a re-telling of Snow White

I began this story after reading a collection of short stories by Angela Carter. “Snow White” has always been a favorite tale of mine and I have placed this re-telling in nineteenth-century rural Louisiana. Near Vacherie, Louisiana, there are not only swamps but also old beautiful plantations. Some of them are restored but others are abandoned and ruined. The places I have seen captured my imagination and I combined them with my impression of Snow White as an object of envy and lust. My heroine Blanche is a hard-working girl who longs to be rich and to live in New Orleans, where her father was born. She is threatened constantly by the attention of the rustics who live around her. Her stepmother beats her when she finds Blanche in Jean-Jacques’ arms. When Blanche runs away from home she is beguiled by Philipe de la Roche, who persuades her to live in New Orleans in a fancy house with seven women. Blanche does not realize that the women are prostitutes. The farmer Jean-Jacques, who love...