Linda Nunes, Teapot Factory
Time Pieces: A Triptych
Andrea Poniers
I. Holos
The history of Greece has been dutifully recorded. It’s been sung about, acted out, painted, parsed and parodied. But until we made the journey to this wonder world ourselves, we never grasped the depth, breadth or height of the ancients, never experienced the snaking in our blood that comes from crossing under the Lion Gate at Mycenae, still standing in spite of time’s best efforts, and placing our sandals on a silvery stone rubbed smooth by centuries of sandals before us, some worn by tourists just like us but during the time known as BCE–Before Current Era–when those strollers or seekers were unaware, as they would have been, that their days and nights were not Current. If history tells us nothing else, it demonstrates there is no “then” and “now,” that my time and your time and the times of all those barefoot or sandaled before us remain side by side or stacked down to up (if you prefer) and that leaving out one moment, one day or year or century, would make as little sense as removing the keystone from the deftly carved gate under which we crossed. All of which is to say: History is for those who live and those who lived it.
II. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Mortalité
You can acquire a map at Père Lachaise Cemetery if it makes you feel better. But it will do you little good once you’ve made the first turn into the labyrinth of Parisians passed-on whose silenced voices call to you, like Sirens, to admire, to weep, or perhaps even to recoil at the monuments in this city within a city built to honor lives well-lived or simply sustained long enough to be noted: an oblong stone to the left aglow with orange lichen; a mausoleum on the right with vines reaching through the gated doors like prisoners of the Bastille; and, straight ahead, a limestone obelisk piercing the air above the resting places of an extensive family, some of whom orchestrated their days in the hope of sharing eternity, here, with heretical lovers, chroniclers of a fractured France long gone but not forgotten, or a celebrated rock star whose early and reckless death is gilded by burial in the City of Lights. But as an arcane philosopher interred under a sinking verdigris cherub might tell us, no degree of supremacy in the construction of monuments can help to differentiate, one from another, the corpses that crumble, over time, to ash beneath this crowded, hallowed plat in central Paris.
III. Pole Pole
I lost my watch in Kenya. I tucked it behind a zipper when I arrived so I’d be able to find it when the time came to board a plane again, never giving it another thought as I traveled dusty, rumbled roads in the steadfast safari vehicle. Mornings, a stretch from early to midday; evenings with languid sunsets. Days upon days, merged with the animals they call wild. Me, like them, wholly there, fully present. Nothing measured by a timepiece. There have been other moments when I wanted time to stand still: when the first couplet of yellow blooms emerged from a just-established rose; when Elphaba clenched the fiercest notes, defying gravity; when whales showed themselves through the window by our honeymoon bed overlooking the Pacific. But within a month, Japanese beetles descend to devour the roses. Within an hour, Elphaba is hunted as a wicked witch. And within a lifetime, marriages ultimately become less wonder-full, if comfortable. Time stands still only when you stand still with it. My new watch arrived on the porch today. I pause before setting the hours and minutes. Just a few more time-less moments, please–the foreplay of a lion pair in Serengeti, the ramble of an elephant family in Amboseli, the stare of a solitary cape buffalo–an old general–near the Ngorongoro lodge.
Andrea Poniers
I. Holos
The history of Greece has been dutifully recorded. It’s been sung about, acted out, painted, parsed and parodied. But until we made the journey to this wonder world ourselves, we never grasped the depth, breadth or height of the ancients, never experienced the snaking in our blood that comes from crossing under the Lion Gate at Mycenae, still standing in spite of time’s best efforts, and placing our sandals on a silvery stone rubbed smooth by centuries of sandals before us, some worn by tourists just like us but during the time known as BCE–Before Current Era–when those strollers or seekers were unaware, as they would have been, that their days and nights were not Current. If history tells us nothing else, it demonstrates there is no “then” and “now,” that my time and your time and the times of all those barefoot or sandaled before us remain side by side or stacked down to up (if you prefer) and that leaving out one moment, one day or year or century, would make as little sense as removing the keystone from the deftly carved gate under which we crossed. All of which is to say: History is for those who live and those who lived it.
II. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Mortalité
You can acquire a map at Père Lachaise Cemetery if it makes you feel better. But it will do you little good once you’ve made the first turn into the labyrinth of Parisians passed-on whose silenced voices call to you, like Sirens, to admire, to weep, or perhaps even to recoil at the monuments in this city within a city built to honor lives well-lived or simply sustained long enough to be noted: an oblong stone to the left aglow with orange lichen; a mausoleum on the right with vines reaching through the gated doors like prisoners of the Bastille; and, straight ahead, a limestone obelisk piercing the air above the resting places of an extensive family, some of whom orchestrated their days in the hope of sharing eternity, here, with heretical lovers, chroniclers of a fractured France long gone but not forgotten, or a celebrated rock star whose early and reckless death is gilded by burial in the City of Lights. But as an arcane philosopher interred under a sinking verdigris cherub might tell us, no degree of supremacy in the construction of monuments can help to differentiate, one from another, the corpses that crumble, over time, to ash beneath this crowded, hallowed plat in central Paris.
III. Pole Pole
I lost my watch in Kenya. I tucked it behind a zipper when I arrived so I’d be able to find it when the time came to board a plane again, never giving it another thought as I traveled dusty, rumbled roads in the steadfast safari vehicle. Mornings, a stretch from early to midday; evenings with languid sunsets. Days upon days, merged with the animals they call wild. Me, like them, wholly there, fully present. Nothing measured by a timepiece. There have been other moments when I wanted time to stand still: when the first couplet of yellow blooms emerged from a just-established rose; when Elphaba clenched the fiercest notes, defying gravity; when whales showed themselves through the window by our honeymoon bed overlooking the Pacific. But within a month, Japanese beetles descend to devour the roses. Within an hour, Elphaba is hunted as a wicked witch. And within a lifetime, marriages ultimately become less wonder-full, if comfortable. Time stands still only when you stand still with it. My new watch arrived on the porch today. I pause before setting the hours and minutes. Just a few more time-less moments, please–the foreplay of a lion pair in Serengeti, the ramble of an elephant family in Amboseli, the stare of a solitary cape buffalo–an old general–near the Ngorongoro lodge.