Time and Place — Part I
9 months ago, I moved countries, ostensibly, in the pursuit of knowledge and ‘exposure’. This adventure is winding down — and thus presents fertile ground for reflection. As much as possible, this is supposed to be an unpretentious account.
Time
The time I left my home, all those months ago, it was time to leave. I was suffering the crippling humiliation of self-sabotage — operating under a cloud of shame — found guilty of falling short of the glory of God. I needed a way to restart the clock. The thing that gives time its shape, is the place where time is endured or enjoyed. Enjoyed, as in, I had a great time on vacation in Bali, or endured, as in he is doing time at Supermax for the crimes he has committed. There’s always a time and a place between which everything happens.
Place
What gives place its authority — Displacement. In a different place — the body deserts you and your embodied knowledge, mastered over years of sensory experience is immediately questionable. Displacement doesn’t always mean automatic admission to a new place. There is purgatory — the labyrinth in between. The market for trading places is imperfect.
Running, my primary refuge (in any place) — is denied me by a bum knee, which makes this place remain unfamiliar. Purgatory still.
Time
Where does all the time go? Really. Time is supposed to fly when you’re having fun and so it has. The distinct adversity of American higher education deserves a more able interlocutor to be properly challenged. The only good that can be said for this adversity is that it enforces presence, which by itself is a real panacea for human beings’ favorite pastime — doomsday forecasting. It is just difficult enough to demand full attention and subordinate your resident demons, real or imaginary, for the time being.
Place
Williamstown is about as real as Narnia. Surreal may be more apt. It is the indescribable beauty of a printed painting, of a toddler’s laughter full of mirth, of two people saying a word at the same time without planning to, and the follow-up giggles in unison on realizing this improbable but precise meeting of minds. This place is the actual clone of nature — beautiful and dangerous and inexhaustible. The town is dripping in bonhomie, the result of a community small and remote enough to learn the most important lesson of humanity –which is that we are indivisible as a species.
Kiwanuka Okot M.J.
