Beyond The Persistence of Memory.

In regards to time ~~~~~~

I think I may have contracted a serious case of Dali clock Syndrome. The symptoms consist of fractal fragmentation and a general inconsistency within the loops of time.

My perception of time has become non-linear, patchy, unmethodical and uncoordinated.

Is it just me...or is time melting away faster than it ever has?

I imagine that I am this vintage 1950s sedan, drifting serenely down a river of molten starlit time. The river flows through a dreamscape where oversized pocket watches melt like Dali's clocks, and the sky is a swirling nebula of amethyst and gold. The atmosphere is thick with an ethereal, dreamlike quality. This scene unfolds in Salvador Dali's style art of the Melting Clocks, with a touch of surrealism and a magical realism aesthetic.

"Dalí's "The Persistence of Memory", the exploration of time and memory. The soft, drooping watches are a representation of the fluidity of time as experienced in dreams, contrasting sharply with the rigid concept of time imposed by the modern world. The inspiration for the melting clocks is often attributed to Dalí's hallucinations after eating Camembert cheese, which he described as "the camembert of time." This motif has become a defining feature of Dalí's work and is recognized worldwide as a symbol of Surrealism and the subconscious mind".

But I have not eaten any Camembert cheese, I don't even know what it is. So why is time passing like melting years as we are being helplessly tossed into a fast approaching train wreck of which we are incapable of stopping..

Time seems hell bent on hurrying me towards seasons that are passing by in a mighty rush as the days zoom by. Is it my state of mind...Am I just imagining myself being propelled ever and ever faster through life's seasons.

Once upon a Time...Time had always behaved itself around me.

Or maybe it didn't. Youth never pays close attention...never notices these things...
How time ticked politely, like a well‑trained clock, refusing to keep its hands to itself.
But somewhere between one birthday and the next, I noticed it beginning to… sort of drip.

At first it was subtle — a minute slipping off the edge of the morning, a memory warping and wobbling at the corners. But soon the hours began to sag like warm wax, pooling at my feet in simmering puddles of gold. I stepped over them the way one steps over fallen leaves, annoyed but resigned. After all, it's just time doing what time does best... becoming "the camembert of my time."

I didn’t panic. Not really...
I simply thought: Ah. So this is what happens when a woman grows beyond the seasons. Or...maybe the seasons have grown beyond the woman!

Because I had grown - and now Time and I are in a perpetual dance of changes.
I’d lived through enough summers to know their tricks, enough winters to stop fearing their sting. I had outgrown the calendar the way a tree outgrows the pot it was planted in. And Time — that persistent and rigid Time — didn’t know what to do with someone who refused to stay inside its lines.

People around me still marched in step with the clock. They hurried, they loved, they counted, they sinned, they chased...they dreamed. They lived.
But I moved differently now — with the slow, deliberate grace of someone who has seen the backstage of existence and knows that the props are made of thin cardboard and fragile paper dreams.

The world called it aging. I called it a strange vellichor of wistfulness maturing timely into clarity.

On some evenings, as the sun folds itself into the horizon, I would notice a Dali‑style clock hanging crooked in the sky. Was it just a metaphor for the years passing? Its face sagged like a tired eyelid, its numbers slipping down its cheeks. Today, it finally noticed me...

It looked embarrassed, as if caught undressed, or undressing.

I laughed at and with Time..
“Don’t worry,” I told it. “I’m melting too.”

The clock blinked, startled. No one had ever spoken to it before.

Unsettled...It whispered, “You’re out of season.”

I nodded...smiling ruefully. “I know.”

And with that admission, something inside me changed...shifted.
The melted hours around my feet rose like mist, swirling into shapes — memories, futures, versions of myself I had worn and discarded. They circled me like flowering petals, but caught in a wind that wasn’t blowing.

I realized then that Time wasn’t trying to break itself...to break me. It was bowing to it's own trajectory.

It was bending itself around me, reshaping its rigid spine to accommodate someone who had stepped beyond its jurisdiction. I was no longer a creature of clocks. I was a creature of thresholds — the place where past and future fold into each other like warm fabric.

I walked forward, and the melting minutes followed, obedient to the shadows.

The seasons of our lives change just as the seasons of the years do.

I was out of the season of youthfulness, out of the season in-between grown and maturing...out of life's designated seasons.

I was out of the usual and the mundane idea of prescribed seasons, yes.

But I am finally alive...basking in my new found element.

And now I carry with me the childhood days of sitting beneath the banana trees...where coconuts and mangoes fall from trees as free as the wind. It takes me back to seasons which once were delightfully well behaved and so very cooperative.