Ding Dongs, daydreams and advent of exams
I survey the coffeehouse with impotent impatience. The 28
minutes before my exam are rapidly vanishing like the days before
my graduation. My foot taps the wooden floor, mocking me with the
lost time it marks. The blood that rushes down my leg to move those
muscles boils like the coffee in the polystyrene cup in my right
hand. The excess java splashes over the too-full brim and slips
through my fingers. There is too much here for one cup.
I think Kerckhoff coffeehouse has a way of laughing at you when
you’re stressed out. Maybe it’s the music, the way it says: Don’t
you wish you were somewhere else? Or maybe it’s the fact that you
can never find a seat. Whatever it is, I am feeling it.
This could be the last time I’ll actually reckon for a seat at
Kerckhoff. Every time I do something this quarter, I think it’ll be
the last time I do blank at UCLA. I get this pervading sense of
uncertainty mixed with a sentimental relief that colors everything
I do. Like stress about a midterm. Twenty-three minutes, I haven’t
cracked a book and I’m standing here with a cup of rapidly chilling
coffee. The room chuckles.
I see a seat open up near the window and rush to it casually, as
if I am the flight attendant calmly walking up the aisle of a
flaming DC-10 telling passengers to get into crash position.
I open my notes and stare. It’s all a big blur. I know the words
are there but I can’t seem to focus my head on them. There are too
many things to do now and I can feel the stress ball in my stomach.
It’s the same with graduation. I’m so close to it I can’t even
grasp its shape or nature. Graduating is the kind of thing you look
forward to for so long you don’t notice it getting any closer until
it’s actually here. Like this test. Why is it that time seems so
elusive except when the shit is going down? Why do I feel time
bearing down on me so hard? I want to stand up and yell something
like, "Ai-Ai-Ai-Lippy-Lu-Lippy-Lu!!!" That would make me feel
better, but even that fantasy doesn’t linger long  it’s
forced out of my frontal lobe because the clock is ticking.
How often do we feel time as a positive presence in our lives?
It seems like time is always in short supply. Sometimes I think if
only I didn’t have to sleep, I could really do everything I want.
Thinking of time as days, hours and minutes makes me feel like I’m
constantly losing it, like I can never catch up. Why is this idea
so stuck in my psyche?
Isn’t time just a human construct, a way to organize our
universe? Watches and clocks are inventions just the same,
artifacts of this mechanical time. Minutes and seconds replaced the
passage of the sun through the sky, days and months eclipsed the
lunar cycle. Natural time was replaced by Timex, Rolex and Casio.
And here’s the good part: minutes and seconds don’t really exist!
We invented them!
In this rigid conception, when can our day slow down to the
point where we can sit on the couch in front of Ricki Lake with a
big can of Olympia? When can it speed up with the excitement of
evading the Westwood parking police while our friends go to the
ATM?
I think my problems in the coffeehouse began at the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution, when someone figured out that time is money
and we really made the jump to light speed. And like money, we
began counting time as if we were all auditioning for the starring
role in a Dickens Christmas play. This pernicious concept has since
run amuck through history like a snowball down the side of Mount
Everest. We’ve constructed time to be rigid, when in actuality it’s
flexible. The problem comes when we try to fit our lives into neat
little blocks of time, when in fact they’re filled with races and
siestas, doldrums and daydreams.
It is only when we lose all sense of time that life is really
experienced. That’s why we say things like: "Time flies when you’re
having fun" or "I lost all track of time." Or why is it that when
something is timeless it becomes valuable? A timeless book or LP
(Neil Diamond’s Hot August Nights for example), a timeless place or
person? Good times transcend the counting.
Like that afternoon I spent lying on the grass with Maybell.
What may have been three hours to someone else was to me an
infinite moment where I did not waste time, spend time or kill it.
Time lost its grip on us entirely and we had lazy fun. We got itchy
and watched squirrels mate. Which brings me to my point. When I
think about good times, it’s not, "Wow, I had a good time for three
hours yesterday!" That is because good times are not measured on
the clock, but by the depth of the experience.
So why do people say there is never enough time? Physics makes
it impossible to squeeze any more hours into the day (unless we
find a way to alter the rotational velocity of this cosmic dirt
clod). What we really need is a new perspective, not new science.
How do we use the time we have toward the ends we desire most?
Didn’t Tycho Brahe have the same number of hours in his day as he
charted the stars? (That’s a lot of math.) Didn’t Roald Dahl have
the same number of days in his week when he wrote "James and the
Giant Peach?" How did they experience time? And do we see it in the
same way?
To change your ideas about time, change your perspective. Do
expected things at unexpected times. Eat breakfast cereal
(preferably Cap’n Crunch) really late at night. Go to school on a
Saturday and just hang (see how it feels to be there without having
to be anywhere). Have sex in the middle of the day. Swim at night
(clothing optional). Most of all, sleep in. These are things that
transcend minutes and seconds. Time is not so much about the amount
we have, but how well we use it.
Speaking of using time, this Friday is the big one: my 25th
birthday. And maybe that’s the reason I’ve got my head wrapped
around this time idea with the hormonal abandon of a Duran Duran
groupie. Isn’t it all downhill from here? Shouldn’t I be whining
about the evaporation of my misspent youth? Isn’t 25 too old to
rock? I’m not so sure. I think getting old is all in your point of
view. Time is on my side because I’m not counting the minutes and
seconds. Time is really lifetime: flexible, bendable and measured
in experience.
So while I’m sucking on hot dogs with extra mustard, taking cuts
in the line for the keg and blowing out the candles on my 25
Hostess Ding Dongs, I’ll be thinking that this is a good time, that
I have no idea what time it is.
* * *
Two minutes left until the exam. I cram everything back into my
bag, notes, napkins and big ideas about the little seconds that
slip by. I am overcome by a weird sense of calm. Maybe it’s like a
resolution about what is important in life. I may fail this test. I
may stress on graduating, but time is on my side.
Kaizen is a senior majoring in ethnomusicology. His columns
appear on alternate Mondays. Send birthday wishes via e-mail to
LSMFT0 (that’s a zero). @ AOL. com.