The Timestream Tastes Like Burnt Lavender Today

The timestream tastes like burnt lavender today.

I’m fairly certain it used to taste like pennies. Nobody announced the change. There was no survey, no maintenance window, and no opportunity to select “strongly disagree.”

Someone rearranged physics just for fun.

This is the trouble with giving anyone administrator privileges over existence. Eventually they get bored and move gravity three inches to the left. You reach for your coffee and find it orbiting a stapler.

Tuesday has apparently taken a break until Wednesday. I support its decision. Tuesday has been showing up consistently for years, and nobody ever thanks it. Monday gets all the attention. Friday gets the affection. Tuesday gets a meeting that could have been an email.

I tasted the second that didn’t happen.

It was surprisingly rich. A little smoky, with notes of an unanswered question. Somewhere inside it, I suspect, was the perfect thing to say in an argument I had twelve years ago. Unfortunately, the second expired before I could write it down.

We spend a remarkable amount of our lives trying to make time behave. We divide it into neat little boxes, assign tasks to the boxes, and become upset when the tasks climb out.

Then an afternoon disappears while we do something we enjoy, and we consider that a good afternoon. An hour stretches endlessly while we wait for news, and suddenly the clocks seem poorly calibrated.

The clock measures one thing. We experience something considerably less cooperative.

Maybe that’s why I like making music and imaginary places. For a little while, I get to choose the weather. I can leave a light on in a spacecraft drifting through nowhere. I can build a radio station where the signal reaches someone who needed company, even if I never find out who.

Reality can rearrange the rest of the furniture.

Anyway, if you dropped this timeline, please come back and collect it. It’s wrinkled.