David Kirby: “Everything Is About Time”
EVERYTHING IS ABOUT TIME
xxxxxAt Southdowns Elementary they’d stop everything to show us
films with titles like “Fire: Man’s Best Friend or Worst Enemy?”
xxxxxand “Your Pal, the Policeman.” Still not sure about that last one.
What about time, though? Why didn’t they ever say anything
xxxxxabout time? I guess they figured we wouldn’t understand.
For one thing, we hadn’t lived long enough to have a past.
xxxxxAnd I could say forget about the future, but there was nothing
xxxxxto forget: the future was a bowl of cereal and a cowboy show
on TV when you got home, then whatever your mom
xxxxxmade for supper and homework and school again the next day.
It takes years to figure out that that time not only wounds
xxxxxall heels but also puts everything in its place,
like an elderly shopkeeper arranging the flower vases
xxxxxand putting the shot glasses here and the war medals
xxxxxthere and the cameos in this display case and the pearl-handled
jackknives in that one, and all the while, the cat in the window
xxxxxsleeps the day away beneath the sign that says Please don’t knock
on window, and the grandfather clock ticks away the hours as does
xxxxxthe universe itself. Everything is about time. We make up stories.
Stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. Something happens,
xxxxxand then something else—Dante goes underground and so does
xxxxxRalph Ellison, Jane Austen whips out her steno pad and follows
the Bennet sisters from one manor house to another, Huck gets on
xxxxxa raft and sails downriver, and so on. But we live in a story
as well, even if ours is not as exciting as theirs. In fifties
xxxxxNew York, people went to John Cage concerts even though
they were boring because they thought they had to.
xxxxxMusic for Changes was a piano work that lasted for an hour
xxxxxand consisted of tone clusters struck randomly up and down
the keyboard according to a coin toss, and as John Ashbery says,
xxxxx“It had very little rhythm and it just went on and on until
you sort of went not out of your mind but into your mind.
xxxxxI really felt it was a kind of renewal.” You sure put your time
to good use there, John! Another artist who has a lot to say
xxxxxabout time is Tom Stoppard: “Because children grow up,
xxxxxwe think a child’s purpose is to grow up,” says Tom Stoppard,
“But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what
xxxxxlives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment.
We don’t value the lily less for not being made of flint and built
xxxxxto last.” Actually, at Southdowns Elementary, we did think
we were built to last. That’s because kids are all body—
xxxxxmind comes later. You can talk about anything with a kid
xxxxxas long as it’s about the body. A kid can’t debate foreign policy
with you or say why they prefer Verdi to Puccini, but they
xxxxxcan tell you with unassailable certainty why soccer is better
than basketball. They’ll tell you the best way to brush your teeth.
xxxxxKids know that diarrhea and vomit are horrible, also fun:
all you have to do is say “diarrhea,” and a kid will tell you
xxxxxabout the time the dog had diarrhea in the back of the SUV
xxxxxher dad had rented to drive the family to Tahoe, and when
her dad slammed on the brakes, the diarrhea flowed from
xxxxxthe back of the SUV to the front. The saddest thing is when
a kid’s mind kicks in and they start realizing how time works.
xxxxxWhen Will was twelve, I took him with me to Sears to get
a set of socket wrenches, and after I’d paid for my socket
xxxxxwrenches, I found Will looking at action figures in the toy
xxxxxdepartment, and when I said,“Come on, let’s go,” he said,
“Don’t rush me, Dad—this may be my last toy.” As I say,
xxxxxit’s sad, but, you know. You want them to grow up.
You don’t want this thirty-year-old to lurch into the room
xxxxxand shout “MILK!” When your child is forty-five, you don’t
want to be driving them to a clarinet lesson or helping them
xxxxxwith their long division. No, that’s the time when you should
xxxxxbe a kid again yourself. That’s when you should be going back
into your body. Take naps! Eat the way kids do: pizza, ice cream,
xxxxxpotato chips. You can read Virginia Woolf or a comic book—
what’s the difference? “You’re not the boss of me!”
xxxxxis something every kid has shouted, usually to someone
who is, in fact, the boss of them. But you’re the boss
xxxxxof yourself now. Look at you—you’ve got all the time in the world.
David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. He is currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.