Time and Space Are Out of Joint

By Jim Winship, Whitewater, Wisconsin, U.S.

“Time is out of joint,” Hamlet exclaims in the first act of the play. His head is reeling with all that has changed, and he is unsure of what to do. Reading the play, sitting safer at home in the early summer of 2020, I feel that for me, time AND space have both been out of joint.

From late March to mid-May, if time was not standing still, it was moving at an eerily slow pace. Someone remarked during those weeks that Groundhog Day is a horror movie, in which we are all living, with each day largely a repetition of the day before. Yes, but in that 1993 comedy, weatherman Phil Connors at least interacted with a lot of people every day. Day after day, the only people my wife and I interacted with outside of screens were each other.

There is a term in Spanish that communicates “out of jointness”—Susto. The word literally means “scare” or “fright.” When you are surprised by the unexpected sound of a clap of thunder, you might exclaim: “Que susto!” Another meaning of susto was explained to me by a curandera, a healer, in Denver some years ago–susto is to be out of equilibrium with the universe. That’s what it feels like– I am three degrees out of alignment.

“Time is out of joint,” and I am experiencing time differently. Now, I don’t believe that I, or any of us, can truly live in the present. I think that we simultaneously live in the past, present, and future. My past, what I have done and experienced and learned, provides the framework, the lens, through which I view the present. 

And the future? Even when I am not thinking about what my tomorrows will be like, my expectations about the future are very much with me. I am fortunate enough not be that worried about paying bills at the end of the month, and the amount of interaction I have to have with others is minimal. I know that if I were out of work or in an essential services job with lots of face-to-face contact, my near-future worries would be in the back of my head, coloring the way I saw the days ahead, even when I was not consciously thinking about them. 

It’s helpful for me to think of experiencing time as sitting on a three-legged stool, the legs of which are past, present, and future. The leg that is the past is solid (we all have clear memories of pre-COVID-19 times). The leg that is the present is a little spongy, as my current days lack some of the activities and rituals that make days solid. And the future– I have trouble imagining what August 1 or January 1, 2021 or next year at this time will be like. Due to the incompetence of the federal response to the pandemic and the uncertainty about how long it will take to develop and distribute a vaccine, and now the injustices in this country crying out loudly for redress– when I try to look into the future, all I see are clouds. That leg of the future is short and rickety. 

Time is out of joint, and I have felt sad and frustrated when I have looked at my Google calendar for the upcoming week and weeks, and find events noted that will not come to pass– play tickets for a performance, a presentation I was scheduled to make in Missouri, a trip to New Mexico to visit with family. The time I am living in is not the one that I was counting on, and it’s disconcerting. 

We live in time and space, and space also seems altered. For one thing, the space that I occupy has been constricted– for a few months just being in our house, then expanding to the porch and yard as the weather improved. 

Hamlet experienced altered space. He came back from college at the University of Wittenberg, and so much had changed– his father dead, his uncle crowned king, his mother suddenly married to his uncle. And then a ghost appeared, demanding that he engage in murder. The castle in which he had grown up had become an alien place, and his out-of-alignment was made worse by all the people expecting him to carry on as if nothing amiss had happened. Space as well as time was out of joint for the Prince of Denmark. 

For me as well, space and time are askew. When I leave our house, I wear a mask when I encounter others. I have had a lot of birthdays, and am more at risk that many folks. Familiar spaces now appear dangerous. Going to a store and seeing a large number of people inside, I walk away. Seeing people walking around without masks, I get nervous. The prospect of doing things that I have always enjoyed– going to a familiar restaurant, attending live theater, getting on a plane to go somewhere new– all of these now fill me with dread. The familiar has become strange, at times dangerous. Time and space are out of joint. 

So what do I do, perched unsteadily on this three-legged stool? Try to be as still as possible? I think back to the time when our children were much younger, just getting the hang of walking, and then walking faster, running. They would careen through the living room, and my wife and I would perch on the edge of our seats, ready to move fast to avoid a collision between a toddler and an end table. 

I am perched now, as balanced as possible, leaning forward on this unsteady three-legged stool of time. I try to make as much of every day as I can. After all, I am not living in a Groundhog Day movie, and I will never have this particular day to live again. And there have been moments and days during the lockdown that I will treasure. 

I lean forward to take action when I can, because the old “Normal,” while comfortable in some ways, was so unjust. We live in a country with too much inequality and intolerance. There are far too few opportunities for many who live here. 

Yes, time and space are out of joint, and it is shifting again. Time often moves at a steady pace, and then a momentous event happens that changes both our perspective of the world and the course of future events. This happened with the John F. Kennedy assassination, with September 11, 2001, and now with  the killing of George Floyd. After way too many black men dying at the hands of white policemen, and a jogger in Georgia being coldly murdered, the reaction to George Floyd’s death is different. Three hundred people turned out as we peacefully marched for Black Lives Matter through our small town the past Sunday, protesting pervasive racism and policy brutality. This was one of a very large number of marches taking place not only in big cities but in places as unlikely as a wealthy Birmingham, Alabama suburb and in Vidor, Texas, the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan in the state. It very well could be, in the words of the Sam Cooke song: “It's been a long, a long time coming, But I know a change gonna come, oh yes, it will.” It’s leaning forward and taking action time. 

Yes, time and space are out of joint, and often I am off balance, buffeted by the countless tragedies in the world, feeling out of alignment with the universe. And yet, I find myself smiling. I am glad, really glad, to be alive in this time and in this place.