On Time-Pausing

On the first day of class, my photography teacher displays an image of a spinning globe, a perfect snapshot of what, according to her,  “photography should be.” 

“Low aperture,” she explains. “Fast shutter. Clever use of light.” 

The words don’t mean anything at first, but class soon becomes a slice of calm as we’re tasked with capturing impermanent moments: billowing crimson leaves marking the edge of winter; crystal gems from the first snow; the unmistakable wrinkle of a laugh on my mother’s face. 

*****

Pictures are pauses, I learn.

4” by 6” frames of reality, but they don’t feel like reality as time passes —

the past growing further and farther away from my 18-year-old self, whose 

room is an oddity of my mother’s well-worn clothes and an imminent scent of expectation.

Novels tell you to live in the present, 

but I am an outgrown child and a precarious adult hastening

from the past to the future and back again —

always on the move.

My mother tells me to grow up:

“Stop acting so foolish;

when will you become more mature?”

But is it a crime to have dreams? To live as I longed to as a kid,

a world traveler who envied no one, who strived for nothing except

the simple joy of a new experience?

Yet I am deathly afraid, for the real world is not so friendly —

the scratched-up woman yelling “Bitch!” at my sister, the 

belittling emails my boss oh-so-kindly sends, the

rabbit hole of an “esteemed university” producing nonsensical robots

who are servants to their egos.

I don’t want to become one of Them, the Empty Puppets on the subways 

working 9-to-5s who lack such unfathomable hope 

that the train ride cannot even provide a sense of stillness. 

They are the ones who can’t be bothered to look up from their phones because 

“Martin, there’s an emergency in the risk department!” and Goldman Sachs can’t possibly afford to lose a single penny.

But I can’t afford to let the world slip from my feeble grasp, 

to lose track of time like rush hour’s halted Red Line that has railed off its tracks,

a wired wind-up toy from the Nutcracker who’ll eventually run out of fuel.

Camus solaces me, tells me it’s okay

that life is meaningless. Meursault is nowhere near inspiring, though, 

and I wonder how someone can be that apathetic. 

My parents are like Sisyphus, Meursault’s alter ego, middle-class workers whose

dictionaries consist of the Oxford and Merriam-Webster shoulder-to-shoulder yet 

lack the definition for “rest.”

I want to be somewhere neither Meursault nor Sisyphus can reach, a dream universe where 

Past and Future aren’t dwelled upon,

but present isn’t such a fleeting slap of reality.

I desperately want to govern 

myself, because people are unforgiving and memories 

are cruel and 

impermanence is merciless. 

Yet I know that pausing time is impossible —

a bitter fate of creation from Pandora’s box 

And I am left wondering how I can possibly make mine last.

by JOY GONG