So, how are you?

The inevitable question.

It has been quite the semester for me. Details shall remain off-line, but suffice it to say that I am older than I was a few months ago. Technically speaking, I suppose that's true for everybody. Are you familiar with the ideas of ontological, psychological, and virtual time? I've only met them briefly, through a short quote from composer Elliot Carter, but this is how I understand them: Ontological time is time as we measure it, the ticking of a clock, the turning of pages on a calendar. Psychological time is time as we feel it, as in "I spent a month there one night." Virtual time becomes a sort of combination of the two, wherein time moves in "fits and starts" according to the state of the observer.

This semester has put me in virtual time with a vengeance. If I were to write a book chapter on this, I would have no idea of most of the dates and figures, though I would probably have the general order of events right. My students tell me what day it is as I write in their notebooks -- I often have that strange feeling that I don't know When I am, if that makes any sense. I usually have Where pretty set, unless I'm mostly asleep (which apartment is this?), but When seems to make less sense and become more irrelevant than it once was. I spend days in limbo, such as my quick trip to Michigan this weekend (what an amazing, sunny, unexpected blessing!). I spend days in a tightly structured schedule, with every minute accounted for (do minutes really count?), such as yesterday when I returned to teach. And I sleep in great gulps, deep, solid hours at a time, as though I've found a beautiful oasis after an age in the desert.

When you're asleep, what sort of time are you operating in?

That's kind of my life right now. I'm in retreat mode, reacting to some of the things that have been a part of this season. I hide in fiction and nature, music and laughter, travel and sunshine. Mostly, I hide in solitude and work. Can you hide in your hermitage while you smile genially, answer the phone, kill ants, teach pre-schoolers? Sort of, I think you can -- if you divide yourself between times. Don't know if it's a good idea, but I do think it can be done.