By Katerina Bonderud, TIWP Student

What if time told the story? Like the story of how everything plays out. Our mind which runs on a hamster wheel every waking moment of the day… and our lips! Our lips which pop, click, whistle, and sing, form the words that our mind tells us to speak. But what happens between the moment we think of what to speak and when it comes out of our mouth? I don’t know about you, but for me, myself and I there is a big g-a-p in the quality between my thoughts and what actually comes out of my mouth.

What I want you to take a moment to consider is:  what if we let time tell the story?

There would be no bias of emotion, thought, miscommunication, and any other bias under the sun—with the one exception of the bias of time (which only time can tell).

Boom bop bing ring! Transition! (Like I said, in my mind there is a g-a-p in quality between what is imagined and actually said.)

One day Katerina Bonderud was standing at a bus stop at 6:52 am waiting for the County Bus which should get to her stop at 6:51 am. The bus was not there. It was running four minutes, nine seconds, and one fourth of a second behind because the bus driver forgot his coffee mug in his car. Katerina felt the emotions of worry and anxiousness.  The bus was right around the corner and, well, if Katerina knew that she probably wouldn’t have walked to the other bus stop that comes after it. Because while thirty seconds out on her journey to the other bus stop, the bus passed her. Which left her waiting —aka the concept of wasting time— five hours (actually just twenty minutes and six seconds) in the skin-biting cold.

This was also the same day Katerina Bonderud conveniently forgot her jacket due to losing track of time figuring out which fuzzy socks worked best with her boots.

Whoops.

Bop boop boom bing ring! Transition!

If only time were to have reached out a hand from its self, spinning on its axis—which is spinning around the sun as it takes a journey around the universe—and told me, “eh, hang in there bud, the bus is just at a red light around the blind corner.”

Wait. What is time? Sure it may be made by the rise and fall of day light… but us humans made it up. Why did we use numbers of 60, and twenty four? And how is this so accurate? It has to be inaccurate by now. (That is, if it were ever accurate.) I mean we created it centuries ago… and when I say created, I mean completely made up. I mean who were the air heads who thought tens were better than sixties and sixties were better than tens? Probably Greek, white, old, wrinkly men. Which “old” means a longer duration of time which “young” is a shorter duration of time?

Everything is changing. If time were to tell us chronologically everything that has changed (down to the trillionth of a second) in the last second, we would grow a head full of gray hair. Which begs the question:  if time—which only tells the truth—where to tell the story, how long would it take? Sure, all life lives under the ticking bomb of time, but then again, what a paradox it would be, what a time warp it would be, if time took up time, telling about time.

Also time wouldn’t be able to keep up with time. I mean, while time is speaking, it would also be passing it by. So time would be passing its self by. (May the teacher become the student, once and for all!)

Am I making any sense? The whole concept of time is something not all the books in the world can accurately describe:  it’s magnificence, it’s strangeness of being, how this world so bound, round, tided up, strangled, and limited by it. (Oh how I hate the word limited! It’s a curse to limit anything!) But oh, how this world is so murdered from it’s potential by time.

Now let’s play a game. What is something that is commonly paired up with time? Something that really is an antonym from the concept of time? Something that humans make a fool of time with?

Regret? Memories? The past? Nope, nope, and nope. Though all are true. I’m talking about the sewer-filled concept of money.

What if money told the story? Now that… that would just make no sense.