Have you ever thought that time is not really real?

I picked up a book that came across my path at the library the other day called Creative Time and Space: Making Room For Art by Rice Freeman-Zachary. In the book are a number of exercises and chapters that include ideas on how to use your art (and writing, music, etc.) to sidestep time and become timeless for a while.

The night before I started reading the book, my husband was sharing some things he learned about the planet Venus in his astronomy class. Namely, that the day on Venus is longer than its year and also that it is rotating backwards.

This kind of made me feel weightless for a moment, similar to the time he told me that the sun would eventually burn out (not for a long, long time — but it made me think) and that we are like an itty little anthill in a solar system that is connected to an enormous array of additional solar systems of which we know nothing.

Cue sinking feeling and sense that gravity is cursory.

In Creative Time & Space, Zachary writes, “For creative people, time unfolds differently and the world of imagination often takes precedence over the world of facts and rules and of course, time.”

Have you ever noticed that when you’re in the flow of creating something, time ceases to even be a thought? Everything seems in its right place and the clock ticking isn’t a bane of your existence. It’s similar to what I was talking about a long time ago when I professed that when you are following your path everything feels like you’ve tapped into a cool stream inside.

When I was a teenager, I used to write everywhere, “Time is irrelevant.”

What I meant was not that time doesn’t matter, but that clock time, the time we measure out our lives to in the current industrial productivity based age, doesn’t matter.

When I was roaming around America on borrowed high school time, I ran into people I knew everywhere I went: from Oregon to Florida. Time ceased to matter. Months flew by in what seemed like days.

When I got sent back home to try and finish high school, studying for the boring CHSPE exam and trying to live a structured by-the-clock life, time seemed to drag on forever. Sometimes I would just sit and watch the clock to see if it really was ticking slower than it ever had before.

I think when we reach the place where clock time ceases to matter, where it feels like we’re in some quantum parallel universe, we are in our true home — one we can’t define by societies dictates and standards of production. One that can’t be begged, borrowed or stolen. One that is truly our own. I often find this bounty of time when I am aimlessly exploring in my car, hiking new paths in the foothills near my apartment or tweaking songs on my guitar. I most always find it when I am writing. Where do you find the space of endless time?