Time + Space = People
These are three words that filled my life this past year, with a small twist that I felt was needed. Admittedly, there were other words and equations as well: Distance. Togetherness. Loss. Appreciation. Disappointment. Elation. Despair. Not sure what those equal but ‘Future’ is perhaps one option?
It is a human trait to reflect over the time that’s passed, and just as much to look forward to the time ahead. Recently, I realized how much I’ve lived in the past in 2022. Cleaning out a house, reckoning with possessions, and sorting through photos, all of it blending in with the current timeline, but at the same time holding back and allowing for reminiscence of what’s been; good and bad.
I am not overly dramatic or sentimental as a person, but having lived with my possessions in a storage unit for the last 5 years or so, has made me see and experience first-hand what it is to live in the present as well as in the past. The future? Not so much, yet.
I have also over the course of the previous 12 months worked on fulfilling a Christmas gift from last year, to write about something in my life with a prompt arriving in my email inbox every Monday, 52 in total. The frequency of the reminders has certainly been an exercise in digging up family history, emotional experiences, and travels and travails alike. It’s been a good exercise, but also a slightly painful one as I have dug deep into my memories of close relatives, more distant ancestors, and other character in my family gallery. Who am I like? Who died, when? Who struggled and how were adventurous? Who moved away (moi!) and who stayed? And not the least, who remained emotionally and or physically present, and who evolved over time? The actors in these episodes are varied and at the same time distinct.
Some of the questions overlap, but all of them carry a similar trait – the interest in and fascination with the past, the specter of the unknown future, and the hardships of the present.
As I write this the time might have come to share that I see time and space in a way that is somewhat unusual. Rather, my brain organizes certain time and space continuum in a visual imagery, called Spatial Sequence Synesthesia, SSS. I see the year, months, week and also the centuries and millennia as representations in visual imagery, with fixed graphics. For example, when I want to locate something in time, I literally go to the place in time, without having to think or figure out a location. It’s like finding a tab in an excel sheet or a book on a shelf. I open it, and voilà! it’s there, already manifested in time and space; to me.
This is not how I see my months and years, but this gives you an idea.
To add, I also have a specific system, or game of sorts, of organizing numbers and shapes, but that’s for another time.
I am grateful for the imagery that my brain gives me and for arranging my visual sentiments in this way. I didn’t’ discover SSS until a few years ago, and it has been a source of delight and discovery for me ever since. My grandfather was a diviner, finding water underground, and maybe he saw these images, too? I never had a chance to ask him, but maybe I will, in some other life.
We all systematize our lives, the past, present and the future, in personal ways that has meaning for us. It propels us forward, sometimes even for spurious or other more dubious reasons. So to be sure, people are made up of time and space, taking their cue from the universe. As individuals we are small, dispossessed of more ethereal experiences, but as a force we have no limits.
My last blog of 2021 spanned fairytales and how we create them in our own image. For 2022, fairytales have not been so much on my mind as have distilled thoughts, creative actions and personal deeds.
For now, let the new year begin! Let it ring, sparkle and shine for you and for the people we belong to, over time and in space.
Photo: Tairon Fernandez via Pexel