If I could have stopped the clock...

During our recent vacation there were numerous moments when I wanted to stop the clock. Time out! Let me walk all around the moment and soak it in, really memorize it. These are stressful, exhausting years, the busiest our lives are likely to ever be, and my days are often filled to bursting. I want to slow down and savor it, chew every minute 60 times before swallowing and ruminating on it later. I want time to understand what it all means before it goes by so fast that all I have left are a few mental snapshots of my loved ones, mostly in silhouette.

>>>> Appendix de Grenouille <<<< Pain, loss, and boredom slow time. Then it crawls over us like the torture of a walking army of tiny insects, taking ages to cross an inch of our skin. Or it is like miles driving alone on a long dark highway when we can't stay awake.

But add friends, or some event longed for and precious, and time is sped up to comedy. It goes by like the police of Keystone. Only when we look back and cannot comprehend the passage does it become tragic, and we wonder how can something as regular as time be so irregular.

Perhaps we save these passages for later, when we are slow and time is slower, and we have so much more of it. Then we will open these images, and color in the silhouettes. Etienne hopes to have his cheri by his side then, to help him get the colors right.

Au revoir,

Grenouille