Let's do the Time Warp again!

Time here in Indonesia has it's own life force, it's own rhythm and a special way of twisting about. It's a regular occurrence that is difficult to explain but most of us seem to agree it happens. Time seems to speed by and in the same moment, drag on.I think time has always had this special property but does seem to me to be extra flexible here.

I was astounded to realize recently that I've been here in Jakarta a year and a half now. I left Spain in August of 2009 and that feels like a hundred years ago. The time looking backwards feels like it's been stretched out.  Over the weekend I met a guy who went to my university but graduated six years before me.  My graduation was December 2002. My fellow Husky (University of Washington Huskies) asked what bars I used to frequent in the university district.  I sheepishly had to admit I didn't.  I graduated at twenty and since the legal drinking age in the US is twenty-one, I didn't go to bars.  I am at a loss when non-Americans ask me about the university experience.  Is it like the movies?  If spring break really that crazy?  Etc, etc.  I don't know.  I didn't have a typical college run at all.

The time between university and now seems fairly clear in my mind though enough has happened to fill a book (or two). That recent span has broken my life into segmented epochs.  There is life before and after dad's death.  That was really the first dividing line.  The first era was a time when he was still in my life in an active way (I think of him often now but it's not exactly an active relationship).  That era also includes the eons-long year he was sick. I will never look at February 26, 2004 as any day other than when he died and my life changed.  Everything since then, consciously or not, has had a tinge of it, of my missing father.  Like a single drop of dye in a bathtub of water, it makes things look different though the core may be the same.


The second epoch break is the line of before/with and after my ex. The former is in Seattle and Salt Lake City, the latter includes Seattle, Guatemala, Spain and now Indonesia.  I'm not bitter about it, and for that I'm grateful.  I've learned what I think I should have.  I've processed the event(s) and can talk about them now, though I usually don't. It was easy to say in the moment that I wished it wasn't happening, that it never had.  Life teaches lessons always by doing first, and contemplating after.  Lesson learned, class completed, moving on.

Pretty much everything before high school graduation gets lumped together.  I have a few very fond and well told memories from my childhood but I don't know that I have lots.  I am realizing how rubbish my memory is already.  I can't wait to get old! I wish now that I had blogged in Spain.  I'm sure there are some fantastic stories I've forgotten already. Recently the intervals in life have been easily and clearly demarcated by my physical location. So much so that when I need to remember what year it was, I think were I was and figure it out from there.

Remember it was only last week that I wrote about impatience.  Time looking back seems to stretch forever into the abyss.  A year ago feels like ages, four seems like an eternity. In firm juxtaposition is the fact that tomorrow is nearly here already.  A relative blink of the eye and it will pass into the vast history as well.  Its my bloody impatience that makes summer holiday a million, billion, gazillion hours from now (not the fifteen days it really is). 

Remember the Stretch Armstrong toys?  He was a soft "doll" superhero filled with goo that you could pull, bend and stretch out then he'd return to his original form when you stopped.  I have just dated myself with that reference as I'm guessing only American kids in the late 80's would know it.  He's a fair metaphor for my view of time these days.  When you "pull" on it by looking forward or back, it distorts and stretches. It looks like more or or less than it really is.  I know what time is as its a firmly set measure; sixty seconds in a minute, twenty four hours in a day, ten years in a decade. If you leave time alone, or stumble upon it on a closet shelf, it looks exactly as it should, ticking by the only way it can.  Tick. . . tick. . . tick. . . second by second.

I remember the one on the left, the slightly David Hasselhoff-esque one on the right is new to me.

 *Bonus point if you know the musical from which the title of today's post comes.  It it may very well be why we're friends, because you Do know!!  haha

Patience is overrated

Patience is a virtue.  That's the old adage that we are told time and time again from when we are knee high to a grasshopper.  Ok, that may be a sentence a little too full of American phrases but I'm sure you get the picture.

We expect children to be impatient.  They have short attention spans, just ask any parent or teacher.  Teachers are told in training that the ideal activity for primary aged students lasts an absolute maximum of fifteen minutes, but ideally closer to ten.  After fifteen minutes the kids switch off and start using their eraser as a battering ram against their neighbor's pencil. We tell them, and work on teaching them, to be patient.  Wait just a minute.  It's almost time.  Soon.  When they can't wait, we lose our patience. I SAID soon!!!  We will go when I say we're ready. It won't be time until it's time.

sourtesy of sodahead.com

Most people get more patient as they grow up.  They learn that although time is a man made construction, we can't speed it along as much as we may want to. There are some of us, how many I have no idea as I seem to be uniquely afflicted with this in my social group, for who patience is a struggle.

My mother once told me she couldn't figure it out.  With children and the elderly I had the patience of a saint.  I could sit for hours with my Alzheimer afflicted grandmother, answering the same five questions again and again ad nauseum without flipping out. I can handle thirty kindergarteners asking the same two questions over and over all day without issue.  Give me a socially retarded (not pc, I know) adult and forget it. She said "It's just adults you have a problem with. Why is that?"  I've figured out its that the young and the old have excuses for their faux pas, their mistakes, their repetitions.  Adults who are stupid are just irritating and they should have learned better by now. Geographically inept taxi drivers, rude and lazy wait staff, confounding IT guys all bear the brunt of my impatience.

I can maintain my demeanor when waiting for mundane things or when being frustrated won't help.  A taxi stuck in the rain or the traffic here won't bear the burden of my hysterics, neither will a dentist/doctors front office.  Waiting for planes and trains aren't issues either, unless they are ridiculously late and aren't announcing anything. I'm a paradox.

That said, I am also a bit child like in the way I wait for things.  It's just over four weeks until the end of term and I'm dying for it to be over.  I probably think about it more than the kids do. I have holidays planned.  Not only am I crippled by the impatience for the first one, but the trip after that at the end of August too!! If someone says, "remind me later to tell you something" I'm immediately all a twitter and want to know now.  I revert to my six year old self and give a half beg/half whine plead to be told.   I order a great looking dessert and can't wait for it to be delivered.  I say I "can't wait" but of course I do.  My life is constantly jumping from one event to another.

All of this considered, I think I do enjoy the anticipation.  I like looking forward to something.  I like the butterflies in my stomach between the time I know we're going to kiss and when our lips actually meet.  I like crossing the days off on the calendar as we get closer to D-day, whatever that particular D-day might be.   Waiting and patience may be the most perfect combination of sweet agony I can imagine.

courtesy of everydaypeoplecartoons.com

This goes out to all of you waiting for things.  I'd love to know how you wait, if you are patient or impatient and how to make the waiting time pass. I'd send some patience along, if I had any to spare.