Time and Time Again

When someone tells you to take your time, your first thought is to replay the suggestion for irony or the irony on steroids that is sarcasm.  In similar fashion, when you hear someone advancing the theory that time will tell, your first impression is to wonder what exact thing it is that time will tell.

When you are asked to do something or it is made clear to you that you ought to do some particular thing with all deliberate speed, you cannot help wondering if you will have the time to do it and then, after a brief calculation, the added wonder of what thing you will need to cancel or reschedule or avoid all together in order to do the thing you were asked or importuned to do.

You return to the subject of time with some regularity, not only in regard to your personal schedule and your professional agendas but also relative to time being the common thread in dramatic writing, music, photography, oil, acrylic, and watercolor painting.  There are other places such as dancing, acting, and cooking (as in hours in the over on stove top).

A simple sentence, "Time is running out" can assume any number of interpretations starting with as insignificant a deadline as a discount coupon at a store having a deadline,  Time can be running out on a warranty, a parking meter, the use-by date on a carton of milk and the deadline time for ordering French toast made from brioche dough at Renaud's Patisserie in either the Loreto Plaza or the small mall across State Street from the Arlington Theater.

Time is running out can mean there is a greater statistical probability that your lifespan will not be as  extensive as it was ten years ago, not that you are looking all that dreadful, rather than you are ten years farther down the line of probability.  At such times, there is a good gulp of royalty in the speculation that you could be hit by a bus or truck tomorrow, even though there might be no statistical probability for you to be hit by a truck or bus tomorrow.

Time for a haircut, time to pick up the laundry, time to clean out Goldfarb's litter box, time to get service on your car.  Time to get serious.  No time for fools.  No time for fooling around, a sentiment that brings forth thoughts of time to get serious, no more fooling around, time to get to work.

Works of art do remarkable things with time, freezing segments of it or capturing the essence of time passing quickly or in slow motion.

When the time comes, we'll be ready or we will not be ready.  When the time comes, we'll understand or find out or discover or be sorry or be elated with joy.  If there is no time like the present to do something, there is the moment when the good times are over, the time to pay the piper, and a time to take a stand.

This time you mean business in a way you did not mean business all those times in the past when you were presumably at play or out to lunch.  Of course, this time you mean it, this time counts, this time you won't make the mistakes of the past.  These times may be times that try men's souls, but you have to allow for the potential that such times generally try womens' patience.

In the best of circumstances, you believe it is time you knew because in the worst of circumstances you spend considerable time worrying about the extent of things you do not know and the degree to which you do not know them, thus your suspicions about how dumb you are may well be validated but you are still in the dark about the extent to which your knowledge is attenuated.

Time to go.  Time to reconsider.  Time to get back to work.  Time to grow up.  Time to slow down.  Time to make your sentences shorter.  Time to make your sentences longer.  Time to call it a day.  Time to get back on the horse.  Time to get off your high horse.

Take your time