Right before we stopped speaking to each other he used to say in a doomy voice that time was elastic, really drawing it out like tiiiiiiiiiiiime is elaaaaaaaastic, and this is both so stupid and so true that we’d get to laughing like a pair of loons (and here I mean the bird). I tend to say that things last forever while they are happening, which is more or less the same thing. I’ve read that our understanding of time, our feel for its passing is what separates us from other animals; here I disagree, between you and me I think what really separates us is our capacity and desire to feel bad on purpose.

Lately I think of time as one of those vacant concepts which will contain whatever you want to put into it. These aren’t all of the things it can hold, of course, but below, a very partial list — imagine that somewhen this list is going on and on and on, okay?

Okay:

1. Time as money

In 1988 the minimum hourly wage for someone under 18 is exactly enough to purchase 1 (one) pack of DuMaurier cigarettes which shared amongst friends will last up to four (4) days, depending on the variable quantity of friends. Remember to turn one upside down in the pack so that when it is smoked, you get to make a wish.

2. Time as empty space

I had a friend once, a best friend once, with whom I spent just about every moment; we would sit together in lectures, hang out in the student union, he used to come over to mine with a knapsack (a knapsack! it was canvas) full of CDs and we would listen to music together for hours and this somehow turned into best friends maybe being in love a bit (him), or a possibly a lot (me) and then the whole thing was so soul-shreddingly terrible that I actually managed to delete nearly all memories of that time from my recollection (and here my fingers are literally being repelled away from the keys of the keyboard as I type as though they have the same magnetic polarity, the effort I am making, my god) except for the one where he showed up at my flat at three in the morning teary-eyed (why? it’s gone, sorry) and threw a pebble at my window and when I came out onto the balcony said come on let’s go, and then we did. He had the same car as my mother right down to the colour, and we drove in it to a park on the other side of the city and went on the swings until it started getting light out. I don’t remember if we talked, but I remember I was wearing hospital pyjama bottoms, a fact my mind has decided is harmless to me in the remembering, so it is saved. Anyway he is married now and lives in a commuter suburb and has two children as do I and occasionally they play Mariokart together while we walk his dog around his neighbourhood. She’s a beagle with the soulful eyes of a Regency heroine (I like to croon this into her pleading face). We talk about everything else.

3. Time as music

I did not have a real feel for distance until I walked hundreds of kilometres over the course of a few weeks once — I got to where I could judge things by sight, a church steeple seen peeking out above some hills is five kilometres which is to say one hour, if you are not in any rush. Lately I measure distance with music instead: for instance, from my house to where I work is exactly two Astronomy Domines long, as I pull into the car park, we hit the key change at the end where we all sing lime and limpid green, the sound surrounds/the icy waters underground for the second time and it lasts forever while it’s happening, o beautiful.

4. Time as magic

Today the thought popped into my head that half the time when I am writing these things what I’m really doing is resurrection, a proper conjure, just like when with a sleepless fretful baby in my arms I would rock and rock in a dim room and recreate my grandmother’s house in my imagination right from the sidewalk all the way to the furthest end of the garden and everything in between until I could smell the bread she was always about to bake, was baking or just had baked, a bread without a defined verb tense, can you believe it? Here is a fact: it is nearly two decades now since I set foot in that house, and I can any time I like still recreate it from scratch. I say fact and not claim because I saw it again, some months ago — my very first boyfriend who now lives in that house facetimed me to say he’d received mail for my grandfather (deceased, 2013, age 104) and what would I like him to do with it?