Counting Minutes

My grandparents windup clock, daily drawing from 9th October 2015

I’ve taken to counting minutes. Watching a minute of comedy on Youtube and rocking with laughter. It’s a distraction to the pain I experience three times a day when doing my knee exercises. You can’t cry when you are laughing.

 I have a set routine; four exercises to complete in rounds of ten. Simple things that I could do easily before my knee replacement operation, are now feats of endurance. Especially stretching my knee backwards and holding it for a minute. It is such excruciating pain.

 At the end of the exercise routine I reward myself with a chocolate (or two). Then rest. That’s a lot of resting during the day. It’s not something I thought I could ever do. Just sit on the bed and do nothing for hours. 

I gaze out the window and listen to the birds sing. Spring has arrived early and with it the 5:30am dawn chorus of birds waking up the plants and activating the earth into a new season. One morning I counted twenty different birds singing together in orchestrated harmony. Flowers fill my bedroom with their scented beauty.

I find myself experiencing states of timelessness. Like when you are travelling in an aeroplane knowing that you will be motionless for hours as you travel through time zones to reach the other side of the world. Longitude is measured in minutes and seconds. Did you know that one degree of longitude is four minutes? It is calculated by the turning of the earth in 360 degrees each day.

Counting minutes helps me connect to the idea of time as a liminal space, the space between what was and what is to come, a threshold into the unknown. It then becomes an exciting challenge to undertake, each minute leading to the next, each breath a renewal of hope for the future. 

Pondering the nature of time is the foundation of some of the greatest philosophical thinkers. My favourite French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, (1884-1962) wrote about time and duration in his treatise Intuition and the Instant which is explored in Maria Popova’s wonderful column The Marginalian.    

“In each of our acts, in the least of our gestures, we should be able to grasp the completeness of what is just unfolding: the end in the beginning.” Bachelard.

It’s comforting to consider that each moment in time, each minute, is an adventure to experience, even if durationally painful. It brings the idea of recovery one step closer to reality and allows me to dream into the future.

Garden view through my window - you can almost smell the jasmine...