The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

by littlesarahbigworld

So we’re back to the present tense, more or less, or at least my present location (Salt Lake City), with a hazy, somewhat disconnected focus on a frame of time spanning about a month in either direction, with the possibility of South America reappearing for one last gasp at any moment.

And what can I say? Time and meaning have blurred in my life, coinciding intriguingly with my current novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife (by Audrey Niffenegger). I stretch my days out by doing less and less, reading in bed, dreaming of a daughter named Calliope, of a relationship breaking apart, and severed limbs, and prose.

I’ve often described myself as an “intensely chronological person,” yet recently I find that falling away, like snakeskin. There’s more chaos this way, more confusion, and yet somehow it’s simpler. More real.

Turns out time does not march steadily forward, like a tin soldier, but rather spreads out, like a release.

Like a long sigh.