Time's Storm

A storm had brewed. Not the cold, wet kind that chilled. No, it was the kind formed by fire, created by ash of the living that had been spit into the air. It was a storm meant to forewarn the coming flames. A storm meant to give time.

Time.

They say ‘time waits for no man’, but the bluff had been called.  Time waits for everyone. Because time is everyone, everything, every change. Time is not just physical. It is life cycle; time is fast, time is slow, time is a moment that changes a life or multiple lives. Time is not just the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, the months or the years. Time is human. A perception. A question. Time is as perceivable as a single drop from the heavens, mixing with the cry of the river as she moves on to shape the land. Time moves with the beholder. Time moved too quickly for me.

It was so easy, the shaping, the remaking. A single drop of time, distilled, and somehow contaminated; that’s all it took for change to grab hold.

There was that building moment as the tear engorged clouds loomed over our family, ready to drop all that it had gathered, desperate to warn us of the coming flames. In the case of this family, no one had taken notice. So no one had taken cover. And we all felt the bite of the flames.

Beneath the burn of the fire I learned the truth of perception. Perception is a thing constantly contradicted. It relents itself to supposed opinion, but once that opinion is conceived, once touched by any kind of force, it feels itself free to change. The product can be whittled into perspective, and perspective all boils down to imagination and experience.

Experience had shown me that the bite of the flame hurt worse than the chill of the rain.

Cold  had always been equated with heartbreak and pain, loneliness and distention. It wasn’t until my intimate acquaintance with such feelings that I realized my fault.

Heartbreak was searing hot.

Heartbreak was like the fire. I had once thought of fire as comfort and security. But I was shown differently. The dense countenance of my being, a forest I had yet to truly discover, had been set aflame. Fire consumes. It catches on the slightest doubt, and then flames rise up like bits of burned letters. Fire is a beast that devours as much within as without, a hundred red and orange tongues  licking the soul. Its frenzied fingers claw until it enkindles the heart and uses the spirit like coals. It changed without permission, burning away things that might have been important. It didn’t take into consideration whether you wanted the change, whether or not you could withstand it. Fire contradicted its most beloved trait, its warmth, and turned it into something cruel. How could I have not noticed that warmth was only a part of fire? It was the part most accounted, the part that hid the violence of its character.

The fire came in the dead of the winter, when the world was frozen, apathetic, and barren. I had never liked winter. Winter was like a sluggish river, polluted and impassable. It vexed my freedom, entrapped me indoors when I only craved the sun and the green. When the anvil came down, when my father left – the flash fire he had ignited razed all comfort of warmth. I hadn’t even realized there was anything to burn.

Perspective can be had without action. I knew this, because I had suspected them; the guilty parties – my father and our family friend. I saw the warning clouds and ignored them. A new year began with a bleeding, heat sensitive scars as my father declared his relationship with the woman. I became familiar with time’s capacity for individuals. I had learned that time on the calendar meant little compared to the time of the aching heart. I had learned that perception swept away ideal physics and that reasoning was the primary key to perception. But reason found so many flaws within itself, so many of its own contradictions that its reliability had been compromised. My mother found too many reasons to blame herself, my father found too many problems so that he could justify his own mistake. They reasoned out their perception, each on different situations. I was stuck between the two, caught right in the middle of the pouring rain and the roaring flames.

By late winter the fires had died away. Spring came and then turned to summer. Leaves bloomed and the air was brimmed with the story of enticing flowers. Bees sang and children laughed. The world flowed and was merry. Yet I was still buried beneath the ash.

Time changed my perception as summer sunlight touched and scorched ground that had been guarded by towering pines. The longing of green lit up by the sunshine had gone. Blue skies that had once promised clarity and gaiety had become a thing that taunted what once was whole. The life around me echoed in the hollowness that the fire had left behind.

The tempering of that blaze had left me bitter towards any kind of heat. Warmth became the trail of blistering tears that leaked from my eyes even after they were told to quit. It was a suffocating heat that grew in my chest as I realized I had been played for a fool. Summer became loneliness, and despair of a house that had once been a home and now felt like a cage. I was eager for the warmth to leave. It suffocated instead of soothed. And I needed to breathe.

Time moved. Summer finally ended bringing with it a cool touch that eased the burns and crystallized another new perception, this one about the cold. Winter no longer triggered a gloomy perspective. The flat gray of a winter sky brought blessed relief from the too bright rays of the summer sun. I took refuge in the cold nights, where the burning in my chest was numbed by the frigid air. When the need to run raged, the cold swaddled me in an embrace, quenching the heat. Cold had a way with silence, and after the roar of the fire, silence was welcome. Silence became the soft lullaby of the falling snow. The heavy air that took my own breath and used it as a caress was full of softly whispered comforts. And the fog that had once been eerie and frightening had become the shrinking of a world I felt too small to inhabit. Cold turned heated tears to gems of ice, making beautiful something born of pain. The hollowness didn’t feel so big with the blankets of white or the sheets of rain.

Upon reflecting, I understood that perception had changed, shifting my perspective, remodeling my time. Warmth had become a richly clad woman of ruby, dancing to a tune that was hers and hers alone. She shared only parts and left us guessing at the temper that simmered beneath. But the cold had become a grandfather, eager to demonstrate his wisdom and talent. He eagerly gave away hopes, hopes for brightness and change.

Time became a mirror reflecting what I had been, etched gently with the hopes of what I could be. Experience comes with time. It’s the cycle willed throughout the seasons, the interpretations and the conclusions. Perception is the reflection of those experiences, building up perspective, thus perspective sets out the mold for time.

I had unequally acknowledge the seasons of perception; believing that once seen would remain forever, once understood would continue undisturbed. But perception must be change, and change is always time.

Time is not a settlement; it is a thing we must inherit. And from that inheritance we must sketch our own design upon it. The seasons all do. Our observations of the world must be as free as the winds that brings color to the leaves, drains them and then brings the color back again. We must bend with time, sway with experience, only then will the concept of obscurity be seen as growth and not haze. Only then will definition lend itself to perception. Only then will pain be seen as the tempering of perspective instead of the smothering of self.