In her observant poem “Brain as Timepiece (Administering the Clock-Drawing Test to My Patient With Dementia)” (Intima, Fall 2018), Jennifer Wolkin describes the disordered clockface drawn by a patient with dementia: each number stands outside its perimeter like lost digits. The patient’s subsequent drawing of an ‘X’ over the wayward numbers suggests an erasure, not only of cognitive function, but of time itself. Time’s toll equates to a ‘crossing out’ of past, present and future as the ‘disease devours …organ tissue’.
“Order” by Catherine Klatzker (Intima, Fall 2017) explores the contrast between logical chronology and the chaos of illness. It deftly portrays the tension between the impulse to control events and the threat posed by what is uncontrollable: a ‘civilized…well behaved’ façade with its concomitant sorting, filing and ordering, is juxtaposed with ‘something… tearing, ripping open — an impossible rupture.’ The ‘tidy folder…neatly clipped’ in which symptoms are recorded, is revealed as both comforting and inevitably inadequate.
My short fiction “Tick-tock” (Intima, Fall 2021) also alludes to tension between order and chaos: a couple’s sterile habits hide unruly truths. In “Tick-tock,” Time is a multifaceted character. It is oppressive. It is habitually comforting. It is threatening. It is absurd. It is a mechanism for avoiding a deeper reality. Seen through the lens of (terminal) illness, it is relentless. There is never enough time. If only time (health /breath /life) could be got back! Time tick-tocks like a heartbeat.
Coincidentally, since writing “Tick-tock,” I had my own ‘meeting with time’: an anxious waiting period as I underwent a series of invasive investigations to rule out malignancy. With life in general rendered more vulnerable in the context of climate change and pandemic, time and transience have certainly been at the forefront of my thoughts.
Time, in all three of our pieces, is depicted as both quantitative and qualitative. It is contextual: the way it is experienced is influenced by circumstances and morbidity. Time will tell. Time crawls. Time marches. Time stands still. Time flies. Ultimately, linear time is ruptured by mortality. It runs out. Or perhaps, we simply shift outside it.
Sophia Wilson is a writer whose work has appeared in publications including Australian Poetry Anthology, Poetry New Zealand, Blackmail Press, Not Very Quiet, Mayhem, Landfall and Bestmicrofiction 2021. Her poetry was recognized recently in the Kathleen Grattan Prize, the Robert Burns Poetry Competition, the Hippocrates Prize and the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize. She lives in New Zealand with her partner and three Eurasian daughters.