Time

Ivan Yi-fan Hu · 2023.5.31

The thirtieth or the thirty-first, whatever; to whom does fifteen minutes past midnight belong? Who cares. Humans wrested time from nature: seven, twelve, twenty-four, never mind whether sunrise and sunset, spring, autumn, winter and summer had numbers to begin with, so long as Zi Chou Yin Mao, common years, leap years and calendars stay in order. Yet humans have enthroned time as a god, commander of the gods of numbers; only its sacred decrees still need the church to interpret them. Who does that? The pope, bishops and priests, of course. Who are they? Just look at who has been granted the power to prescribe time. I haven't, so I don't care to whom that fifteen past midnight belonged, or this twenty-six past. Someone cares, of course—not only the handful who prescribe time, but many people whose time is prescribed, like mine. I simply don't care.

And yet I am cared about. Not the mischievous, disgraceful me writing these words, disregarding assignments due in one day, six days and twenty days, presuming to overstep, but the me who gets up, sleeps, eats and exercises on time, coasts through classes, flips through books and stitches together essays on time, seeks work, starts a business, marries and has children on time, publishes papers and books and gets promoted to professor on time... The on-time me. I am not myself; I am a string of numbers. Oh no, there I go overstepping again: I am only a stray lamb awaiting instruction and salvation from the holy spirit of numbers and the gospel of the church, or, in the words of that priest with a taste for "formatting", one of the "children whose blood has yet to settle".

I'd better stop here, or I'll miss tomorrow evening's assignment ddl. Ddl, deadline, "death-line": life or death depends on a single line. Moses' staff parts the Red Sea, a broad line helps you out of Egypt; Zhao Kuangyin's jade axe draws a line across the Dadu River, and the southwest can be free of trouble for a hundred years. I am no prophet, no emperor, but I have countless lines of life and death. Spared the labour of making lines, I have lost the wish to make them too. I have fallen in love with the gaps between them. Isn't leaping across and bounding along the edge of life and death more interesting than curling up and barely staying alive?

But the Inquisition soon arrives on schedule. I am found guilty of blasphemous heresy, though I need not be burned alive. They send me back where I came from. I am bewildered: the one who incited me, punished me and pardoned me seems to be the same person. Yet thinking of the others locked with me in that damp, cold holding room, I feel both frightened and relieved. "Just drag it out, what's it going to do to you?" "You get used to it, it's nothing."... Mouths reclining on straw mats, squatting against grey walls, rubbing, scraping and picking, prove to me through sweat, tartar, flakes of skin and excrement that they are still young, still taut and elastic, still able to chatter without end, still not giving a damn, though they are only mouths now.

When I was first sent back, I copied them and enjoyed myself immensely. But within days I noticed something wrong: everything except my mouth was turning transparent. I could see my brain shrinking, its connection to the mouth melting. I was frightened; a few days later I returned to my former ways. So I kept leaping and bounding, kept being detained, tried and released as part of the routine. But the lines multiplied, the gaps narrowed, I had to bend even to stand, then kneel, and at last let myself turn transparent and be severed until only a mouth remained: licking, swallowing, excreting, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Oh God, one twenty-seven and fifteen seconds, only twenty-two hours, thirty-two minutes and forty-five seconds left. Three thousand characters, three pages, ten marks maximum, twenty-five students enrolled, eighty per cent excellent grades, classes on Monday and Thursday, eight in the morning and ten in the morning, five absences cost five marks, speaking once earns one mark, thirty-five marks for an hour and a half to write out eight thousand characters from memory, seven courses, eight papers, nine questions... Yet I am still here writing these reactionary words. Though my knees are stiff from kneeling so long, I still presume to revisit those old scenes of leaping and bounding. I accidentally hit a line—for the first time—and instinctively retreat and crouch on my knees. What happened next I had not foreseen:

The lines shattered all over the floor. Everywhere there were gaps. My brain came back; I was connected to it again, and my transparent body gradually became visible.

"Wonderful, now I can keep jumping," I told myself.

Someone came toward me with a calendar and a calculator.

Written shortly after four in the morning, 31 May 2023, in the basement study room of South Dormitory No. 9

A course called "History of Ancient Chinese Literature"

Wanting to die and wanting to live; perhaps rather more of the former?

References

To be entered

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