At dVerse Lisa is hosting Prosery (144 words of prose) with an invitation to use the line “On this day, without a date, on a back street, dusky” from the poem ‘My Friend Someone’ by Charles Simic.
dVerse Poets – Prosery – Charles Simic: Finding Our Pack
Photo: Taking a slow walk in the State Forest at Kirrup.
“People create all kind of fancy watches and clocks, never stopping to realise that they’re building monuments to the greatest of all thieves.” K. Martin Beckner
There’s A Certain Bliss In Losing Time
Some time ago, over three thousand years, give or take, Joshua claimed that God stopped time. I’m really not bothered whether or not that’s true. I’m captivated by the possibility. I have days where I’d really like to stop time so that there is nothing. I don’t want for something, I want for nothing. There’s a certain bliss in losing time, especially when even self is forgotten and, no one, no thing intrudes, not even myself. The bliss is accentuated in knowing I could stay there or, I could come back at any second, after all, nothing is a choice. Propinquity, that’s the thing, being close to stopping time.
Joshua also claimed that when God stopped time, a whole day was lost. Lost days have no name, no date, so on this day, without a date, on a back street, dusky, I walk into nothing.
Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
parallax 
God never stopped time; He made the Sun stand still in the sky giving Joshua more time to catch up with the men he was pursuing. This story is very hard to believe, but God was a lot different back then.
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🙂 this is true of course, but I took license 🙂 Yes, culture determines many things.
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This passage caused a major riff between Religion and Science, because the Bible said that the Sun was stopped and that made everyone doubt that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
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Yes, and while the two disciplines can support each other and often do, they should never be mutually exclusive in my view.
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I love your opening quote, Paul. Indeed! I also like where you took yourself and then shared where it took you ❤
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Thank you very much Lisa, I appreciate this.
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You’re very welcome.
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“There’s a certain bliss In losing time”– thak you for sharing your thoughts.
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My pleasure – and thank you for sharing yours Amy, appreciated.
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An interesting concept, Paul. I like your thoughts here. I guess time will stop when the heart stops ticking.
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Yes, that eternal untime kicks in, I hope.
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:>)
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A thought-provoking prosery. Losing awareness of time is a blissful state, yet afterwards, time storms in with a vengeance.
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Didn’t the Greeks have a word for the timeless mental condition? I believe they considered it very healthy to go to it from time to time, also.
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Interesting. I didn’t know that.
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They also had several words for different kinds of love.
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“Agape” is the only one I know.
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It’s my favorite ~ overwhelming unconditional wonder!
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🙂
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Yes!
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👍👌☺️
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Indeed
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Actually, as usual, the ancient Greeks had a few words for timelessness – αιωνια which gives us perpetual and eon; απειρον which gives us infinity; αγγλικα which references that which is undisturbed by time; ευθυμια which gives us the middle state (as between two states of being) which is the one I think you are pointing to – well there ya go, I got carried away.
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Well, there we go, on a silver platter! Thanks for the scholarship, podner!
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Ha, cheers mate.
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Agape–highest form; unconditional love of God for humanity;
Eros–romantic love;
Philia–friendship, companionship; strong bond between people with mutual interests;
Storge–fondness through familiarity; family; affectionate love;
Xenia–“guest friendship”; hospitality.
I just learned about these, so thought I’d share!😊 Not sure about the time concepts though, aside from “aion”, “chronos” and “kairos”.
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Thank you for the additional information, Melissa!
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🙂
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Yes indeed 🙂
euthymia (ευθυμια) seems to be the one, the timeless state of mind, it became a descriptor in psychiatry eventually. Language lives on eh?
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Somehow that evaded my research. Thank you! It thankfully does.
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Teamwork all round, thank you too 🙂
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Yes, that last phrase is so chillingly true, thank you Liz (I think) 🙂
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You’re welcome. 🙂
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The Mayan long-count calendar (they lived by seven of them, even the simplest of which was to our current uniformly blocked rectangles as a doctoral dissertation is to fingerprinting) contained a “day out of time.”
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Yes, I remember reading about that about the time of the Y2K scam, fascinating rhythm.
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Hahaha, I remember Y2K! What a panic!
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Yes, the herd stampeding again.
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I love the concept of manipulating time,
and
“no one, no thing intrudes, not even myself”
Stopping time and stilling self.🤯
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Yes, in a nutshell – the best way for me at least 🙂
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Deep .. fascinating prose! Cheers.
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Thank you so much Helen 🙂
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This is smashing! ⏰
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Many thanks Leslie – appreciated 🙂
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