About Time

Time is free, but it's priceless.  You can't own it, but you can use it.  You can't keep it, but you can spend it.  Once you've lost it you can never get it back. 

- Harvey Mackay

Time involves a sequence of events moving forward. Irreversible, it flows from past through present to future. We measure it in segments and seasons. A variety of instruments reveal it: clocks, wrist watches, computer monitors, cell phones. 


We learn time is of the essence. It waits for no one. We're admonished not to waste time.  Staying on time becomes a challenge. Wisdom arrives when we learn about life's timing. 


Writers expel ideas in the moment. We can speed or slow sentences and paragraphs to create mood and provide intensity to capture the reader. Decades can exist in pages. In a chapter, time shrinks, expands or gets pruned as irrelevant. Poems and stories jump forward, backwards, even sideways. Characters might move in parallel time exploring worlds beyond the present.


Other views of time: 

Time is what we want most, but...what we use worst.  ~Willaim Penn

Time is the longest distance between two places.  ~Tennessee Williams

For centuries, man believed that the sun revolves around the earth.  Centuries later, he still thinks that time moves clockwise.  ~Robert Brault

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  ~Henry David Thoreau

The Present is a Point just passed.  ~David Russell

Methinks I see the wanton hours flee,
And as they pass, turn back and laugh at me.
                          ~George Villiers

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.  ~Charles Caleb Colton

Creative Write: How would you write about time? Let the above concerns spark your notions. Write to make the reader lose track of time.