My relationship with time is obsessive. I keep time as a habit rather than as a tool. I ask Siri what time is it? constantly, as if this exchange with the machine could slow time down. On the way to the gallery, I pass Big Ben — as I do twice a day, every day between the hours of six a.m. and midnight. As I sat down to read On Kawara’s One Million Years, I started limiting the timing of my body; licking my lips; twisting the cap from my bottle; raising the glass to my lips. Eventually it all becomes automatic. I don’t recall breathing between the years.
That morning, frost had covered the city. It is the first time in the while that I have seen such an expanse of white. I thought back to walking across the school field, back to soft feet over firm ground. I think also of the storm of time, a storm where I am unable to see into the future and unable to alter the past. The two blend into one. It is in schools that we first instil Time into youth in a real, palpable sense. Until then, there is nothing that they can truly be late for.
Before reading, I struggle to remember when I had last lost track of time, despite lying about doing so often. I didn’t listen to R, my co-reader, as she read each even number between my odds. When asked who could read with me, myself standing-in at the last minute, there were no questions as to who I would ask. And yet, it became easier to ignore the downbeat and let the pendulum keep ticking.
The sequence becomes apparent without thought for chronology. Time unfurls in patterns, rather than integers. Intervals between the spoken years vary but we settle on an entropic rhythm. Patterns are predictable in a way that languages (and numerical values translated into language) are not. With each date, I am opening up the possibility of the unknown.
Otherwise, with each date I read, I am creating a gap in which my co-reader can slip up — swapping numbers in error and having to repeat herself. I do the same too, losing track far more than R. The readers before me took notes as they read. I started the session wanting to write think nothing but didn’t dare disrupt the purity of the dates. Instead, I opted to draw columns through the odd numbers, my numbers, and mark only where I spoke in error. Time is better marked by the event than the passing. I stopped crossing out each number so I could focus more clearly on the pattern.
Recently I tried counting sheep walking through fields to beat my insomnia, but I instead became fixated — obsessed over trying to remember what a sheep looked like in vivid detail. I pictured myself following the curve of its horns and trying to understand their perfect mathematics. I finish the reading the same way as that dream: euphoric, as if drunken with time itself.
I can’t imagine the dates I read or what the world will look like when they come. As with passing time, the start and the end date felt irrelevant. What I am reading is post-historic time: entirely imaginary but dictated by order.
When I finish reading, I joke that I need to scroll Tiktok to bring myself back to reality. It was all over so quickly. It’s funny how different time is now — when scrolling, so much content can be consumed in so little time. I wonder what it will feel like in a million years.