Lapsed

Time lapse videos: the new trend. How cool. Squeeze a whole day into thirty seconds. It's possible, see, just check out this thirty-second-on-speed vine clip created by a rampant teenager.  Look how fast it goes. Morning, noon, night, run, run, go, go, don't stop, don't breathe, don't look... aaaand, break. It's over.

Sure, time lapses, the new trendy bit in media and content creation. "New." Psssh. Ain't nothing new in this world. Everything old is new again. So they say. Yes, that's that proverbial Big Brother "They" again. It's back. They say that. Everything old is new again, including time lapses.

Well, to her, at least.

What is a time lapse anyway? A prolonged amount of time, squeezed dry of its meaning, of its moral compass. It is a moment in time, once real, now devoid of its reality. They saw a red door and wanted to paint it black. So they did. They painted it all black. No colors anymore, they wanted them to turn black. Thank you, Stones, I relish in your metaphorical waxing. Time elapsed, from a rainbow of life, love, lust and wonder... to a dark slate of cold black, splintered wood. 

A life too fast to catch up with. "Life moves fast. If you don't stop for a second, you could miss it." Yes, Buehller, you knew what a time lapse was even back in the innocent 80's. Racing through the world like a damn rodent on a wheel. Running, up, down, in a circle, faster and faster and faster but going absolutely fucking nowhere. The time lapse of the rat race of life. No, it's nothing new she said. 

Bring on those trendy time lapse videos, please, they say!! Buzzfeed, The Onion, HuffPo, Daily Mail... bring us more! So cool and new, right? We want more of your life-on-speed new awesomeness, we all plead. Show us everything and show us fast! Give us the world and give it to us in less than a minute! Yes! Right? No.

None of this is new to her. Her whole past was a time lapse of sorts. Sprinting through the finish line of youth, cross the barrier of adulthood  and into the terrain of actual life. Hurry up, finish those exams, faster, go, quicker, get that promotion, get to the next level, supervisor, director, VP, more money, go, go, GO, GOOO. But what then, what happened next, where was there to step when the sidewalk ended? Tell her, Mr. Silverstein. Where to, now? Oh, the places she'll go? But where?

The lapse of time was old but new again. Trendy, she said, what does that even mean? The lapsing of time is neither trendy nor new. It's not cool and it's not fun, it's a sad state of untimely affairs and there is nothing trendy about it. Fast forward is a button reserved for DVR and Netflix, not human life, she said. You keep it, buzzfeed, I don't want it. You hit fast forward times five, you speed it all up to the pace of Alvin Simon Ana Theodore, but no I won't do that anymore. Go ahead and be my guest, you leverage the efficiencies of the speed of life, but I shall not. I shall soak up the inefficienices, the slow melting ice cream sundaes and the beating sun and take the time to walk without falling and type without erring and speak wtihout slurring. I shall do all of those things while the rest of you all boast your proud abundances, er, lapses of time. Raise them up, push them out, make them viral. Gooo, do it, quickly and now. Then collect your prizes and take them home.

I choose to relish in the glory of the art of time. For once, I choose not to hit fast forward and instead to float along with the current. Yes that is my choice and mine alone and I shall stick with it until it drifts off into the white caps of the tide. So for now, here I am and here I go, back into the slow moving chocolate waters of life and time.

The rest of you, keep your time lapses safe and keep them dry. Stay balanced and oil your hamster wheel, for the metal gets slick. me, I slipped, my heel lost its grip. Now I'm off the wheel and floating along.