Time.  What a concept is this time.  It is purely a human invention through and through.  Since I was young I was taught the principles of time.  Clocks reign in abundance, ringing on the hour, telling me how much time is left.  Time has become a force.  Some hungry entity which is constantly moving ahead, waiting for no man, devouring all in it's path, leaving nothing untouched.  Like any construction of the mind it is almost, nay, it is impossible to break.  It is difficulty to discuss time because it is very relative and our language is simply littered with deceiving verbs and tenses which seem to reinforce that which I am trying to expose and destroy.

You can change your life- if you wanna
You can change your clothes- if you wanna

If you change your mind
Well, that's the way it goes

But I'm gonna keep your jeans
And your old black hat- cause I wanna
They look good on me
You're never gonna get them back
At least not today, not today, not today
'cause...

Society is run on time.  Run by time.  It controls nearly everything we do, its powerful hands clasped around our throats slowly choking us, or killing us if we cant keep up.  I was, like every othr child, brought up to believe in time as a force which moves all things and controls the destiny of the whole universe.  I was made aware that the perception of time was fundamental to existence and absolutely necessary to live in our world.  I was shown a way of measuring my experience and chopping it up into seconds, minutes, hours.  I soon realized through this that my life was simply a number.  A quantity of time that I have to exist, rather like some pigeon hole to fill in.  When my life ran out, I would be gone to make way for the next generation, to free up more time.

They hardly had to tell me anything.  When one is a child one may readily accept anything given to oneself in all seriousness as true and undisputed.  One does not know any better, after all.  It is only the beginning and the clean slate must be filled up.  So here I am then, accepting whatever the elders tell me about time, furthrmore, even feeling their concept and finding taking shape--no--shaping my mind for all, ahem, time.  I have been shaped then, by this artificial concept which forms part of the foundation of my mind's structure.  I cannot doubt their words, because I can not yet speak.  Even so, I have no frame of reference, nothing from which I could stand and relate and compare this new idea with my own feelings of reality.  So early have I been molded, my malleable mind beginning to take the shape of a rigid structure, not just in relation to time, but other things as well.  The first emergence of the ego.

Society has told me that all things are subjects or objects.  I now have a grid-like viewpoint of the world in which I dwell, and my mind is structured the same way.  Boxes, columns, rows--the grid is my mind, this is how I must see things in order to undrstand what they tell me.  In order to relate and take an active part in my society.  Maybe I can even feel the sand being kicked over my original nature, but what can I do?  I know nothing else but what they show me, what they tell me, and what I feel from those things and anything else I come in contact with.  Every little 'thing' is being filed away in my new filing-cabinet-structured mind for use further down the timeline.  Things that may or may not affect me later.  I don't know and cant differentiate.  I simply take in everything and hope, no, try to sort it out according to the guidelines that they gave me to follow.  What if something appears outside these guidelines?  I may experience it in the purest way or push it aside to the back and continue or let it attack my structure and try to explain it to myself--maybe be seeking answers elsewhere, or by using my 'imagination'.

They show me things they aren't even aware that they're showing me.  I take it all in, and they tell me more about subjects and objects.  There is good and there is bad, which they demonstrate to me through their own codes and in regards to my safety and well-being and preservation.  They tell me that there is a past, a present, and a future.  I am given the control of the beast which devours all life and rules over it. I am shown how to drive this buldozer and simply accept its truth.  Now maybe I feel this motion, the pushing faster to no end, right off into oblivion.  When I see and understand their concept, now my life begins.

If it's over, let it go and
Come tomorrow it will seem
So yesterday, so yesterday
I'm just a bird that's already flown away

Laugh it off let it go and
When you wake up it will seem
So yesterday, so yesterday
Haven't you heard that I'm gonna be okay

I may settle down at first, as I get comfortable with this new idea, I do not wish to drive the vehicle too fast, as least, not yet.  I lie down and let this beast run through my structure, let it frolic and play, let my mind play with it.  It runs free for some period, but eventually finds a spot, a niche, a home to roost, and then plants itself.  Now I begin to see what they described, and for me how could it be any other way?  I am helplessly a creation of that which was and is around me so that all I know is what they are, what they see, say, think, and feel.  This time is playing with me.  This past is calling to me.  I begin to imagine, and I begin to control this element in my own mind, shaping it, bending it, testing its strengths and merits and...I do not test its weaknesses.  They do not exist, not yet anyway.  I was told and shown that this is how it is, so how could it have any weaknesses, after all this is what guides, controls, and dominates all life?

So here I am, playing with time, relegating my experience into the same boxes and rows that have structured my mind, and the same grid-like pattern which overlays my mind's eye.  It is not as well-defined yet, because it had not been long established, but it will come.  My original eyes are covered, no, forgotten simply because I need to learn.  I learn what I see, what they tell me so I can be like them and relate.  I am one of them after all.  I know it no other way, and the virus takes root and gains strength.  Now they throw in learning other things.  More knowledge to be attributed to my files.  Among this is the past, history, the order of things, the births, lives, and deaths of all things.  I am made to become aware of a whole world of things and events which came before me, and how they structured the world and indeed gave rise to my own structure.  It seems like a fairly efficient way of sorting this information by way of rows, columns, and boxes so I find a useful tool in what they have given me.  But my structure is not yet as strong as theirs and it even blurs in spots, so I can be hard, and I can get 'mixed up' because I end up nowhere.  Neither from whence I came or where they want my to be, but a blurring of the two.  It fades quickly however with more and more structural reinforcements.

Because my mind is not yet rigid and my conceptual thoughts not yet made of stone, my time may get confused.  I may forget some things, because I have no place to store them, because I can only have so many boxes, rows, and columns.  With all this new knowledge I can have fun though!  I can conjure up images of things I've never seen before and have adventures in myself with my 'imagination'.

You can say you're bored- if you wanna
You can act real tough- if you wanna
You can say you're torn
But I've heard enough

Thank you... you made my mind up for me
When you started to ignore me
Do you see a single tear
It isn't gonna happen here
At least not today, not today, not today
'cause...

I play with their timelines in which all things occur as events or plots on that line.  I am left to assume that it goes on forever and that there is some infinite and illimitable divisioning of that timeline into smaller and smaller parts.  My versions of history are confused and not in their order.  I find myself thinking of their history and not my own.  There is simply so much more of it!  This creature is huge--and he extends on to forever into the past and future.  I can play here infinitely.  While in the midst of my exploration they come to me and tell me that all things have a beginning and an ending.  I have not seen these!  They are unseen forces that are very powrful indeed, that which controls life as they have told me.  How can I sort these things into my files?  How can I see my beginning which was before me, and my ending which has not yet arrived?  Where am I then?

I am here, still where I sit, where I always was sitting.  But this realization is fading in the thrill of the roller-coaster ride exhillerance of feeling that is this 'time'.  The vehicle is picking up speed, and I am hanging on the back, unconcerned with where I am headed, or where I am, or where I was.  I feel the speed, the motion, and I am in that feeling which is like a cushion-like field that encompasses me and holds me.  I can see that which speeds underfoot, and note the different speeds it appears to have from different perspectives.  The field keeps me, like a warm quilt on a winter night.  I sink into it and now is when I drift away into the strucuture which is growing before me, which is my mind.  Could I lose myself in myself?  I can hardly comprehend this new labryinth which seems to be taking control and guarding itself and it's secrets most scrupulously.

If it's over, let it go and
Come tomorrow it will seem
So yesterday, so yesterday
I'm just a bird that's already flown away

Laugh it off let it go and
When you wake up it will seem
So yesterday, so yesterday
Haven't you heard that I'm gonna be okay

My world is images.  My world is what is around me, indeed I am that which surrounds me.  Why do they teach me 'I'?  Everything I must see, I must feel, I must understand and follow.  I must taste and smell and cry and move with the conviction of being me.  Me and they.  I begin to see that what appears to me as sound, structure and colour is really all separate and individual entities.  They are all things.  I imagine that which is beyond my sight, and recall that from which I have ventured.

Sinking in this motion I find my thoughts adrift in the ocean they put before me.  The feeling of encompassing movemnt and infinite depth which hides itself from my eyes and ears.  Why does it hide?  What cant I know?  I am simply looking, probing around, exploring my new playground, examining whether these boundaries they tell me about really exist at all.  What is it that I shouldn't see?  Why does this move so fast that I can't absorb and understand every detail?  It feels as a force taking over quickly, quietly, a couple that does not want any trouble, only obedience.  This revolution is disguised and I don't foresee any difficulty.  What would the very means for my entry and assumilation into the world my parents describe be the very thing which is slowly taking my life?  Why would it start my life just to end it?  Here is my faith in what is related and I try to understand things via my system of filling, in rows, columns, and boxes.  The very system I seek to put into use, that which was given to me, is wasting no time in establishing itself by creating roots deep in my mind, where even I cannot reach.  Yet my mind is not like the ocean, where pressure can crush you at certain depths, or like the sky which pressure is alleviatd at dizzying heights.  I may be like space, but it is not a vacuum devoid of all but what is placed there.  Being like space it has depth in even the smallest quantity, where a tiny portion is all space and all space is the tiny portion.  My mind is and my thoughts are (they are mostly images now, they would later shape themselves into words, or stuff that is like words).  I cannot dig, for there is nothing to be uncovered, so where is there a place to hide?  Is this their legacy?  Confusion and mystery where before there was feelings and images?

My drifting thoughts.  My dreams sift through my experiences.  In their timeline, I would have dreamed my first night, about my first day.  The second night I would have two days to draw from.  The third night I would have a wealth of three days of images and experiences, and so on towards no end, except an increasing conplexity of thought and dreams.  Increasing with my knowledge and all they tell me as I review it through my mind.  I am occupied with these thoughts.  They play free now, but I will soon need to assert control over them and demand some useful command hierarchy.  Interesting how my eyes see and my blood flows, but they did not teach my those things.  My voice cries loud, and I see that they form their sounds so I need to accomplish a similar feat.  I discover the meanings of their 'words' by repetition and exposure.  Eventually I will be able to review this in my files and make use of it by re-uttring the sounds to communicate.  This they teach me, but I do not struggle, for it is merely natural to emulate that which is like me that determines my viewpoint.  My battle will come when they start feeding me more and more things directly and purposefully, cramming things into all of my files before I can sort them out.  How can I ever really sort them, when the very system I will use is not completely undrstood?

In this time-motion I still feel the blur of what I had, and still have.  What they say is operating on the level of that structure that is forming in my mind.  That is where thoughts are.  Cognitive, intellectual, the scientific method of constructing a basis for orderly thought (1,2,3) via rows, columns, boxes.  While I still see the true, how can I not consider the conceptual?  This is what I think about.  I cannot escape it because it is on the same plane as what was made in my mind that causes me to think, and defines my thought.  Were it not for that structure, I would not think, at least not in their way.  The only reason I feel half in my original (actually the first, just what was before my structure according to their thoughts; right now there is no second state from which to compare the first, so 'original' is for demonstation sake only) and partly in my structure, is because that grid-like creature had not completely taken over all of my mind yet.  It will in good time come to a point of rulership over evrything, but for now it seems to be in the back coming up, while growing, distant yet attached for use on a trial basis and as the oncoming entry point into the world of relating to those who taught me.  So it lures me, calls to me, night and day, sleeping and awake and I cannot resist.  The motion is the thrill and it is fun, a new experience.  The motion complemented by the structure, solid and in order.  Moving freely through rows and columns as the succession of boxes at the speed of movement becomes satisfying.  What a marvelous thing it is!  I can drift off from my sight and sounds and travel this road anywhere.  But when I use the structure to think, am I not still seeing, still hearing?  Control becomes more lax and the beast slowly creeps in taking over inch by inch.

If you're over me, I'm already over you
If it's all been done, what is left to do
How can you hang up if the line is dead
If you wanna walk, I'm a step ahead
If you're moving on, I'm already gone
If the light is off then it isn't on
At least not today, not today, not today
'cause

If it's over, let it go and
Come tomorrow it will seem
So yesterday, so yesterday
I'm just a bird that's already flown away

Laugh it off let it go and
When you wake up it will seem
So yesterday, so yesterday
Haven't you heard that I'm gonna be okay

If it's over, let it go and
Come tomorrow it will seem
So yesterday, so yesterday
I'm just a bird that's already flown away

Laugh it off let it go and
When you wake up it will seem
So yesterday, so yesterday
Haven't you heard that I'm gonna be okay

So I sit and imagine.  But what can I imagine now, with so little in my head according to their timelines?  All my experiences must fall into my files somewhere.  I can review those files and mix them or interchange them in any infinite combinations.  I eagrly await more and more that I can run through the system and delight in it's very operation.  Now I am looking to the future. I begin to hope for what is and construct dreams of the future by extracting elemnts and viewing patterns in the files, then laying them down before me for observation.  So here I sit constantly reaching back into my files and putting that reconstituted information forwards for my eye while I sit comfortably in my blanket which keeps me warm and safe...from stopping.

Fun Fact: In this essay Hilary Duff made "turd face" to express emotion 5.66 times.