ASKING FAVORS OF TIME, DEMANDING FAVORS OF TIME, COMMANDING SPACE, BEING WITH PEOPLE TOGETHER, TRYING TO KEEP TOGETHER INTACT AT TIME’S JUG’S BOTTOM, HOWEVER JINGLED, IN OUR MOVING HOME. “KEEP ME, TIME. PRESERVE ME, IN YOU. BE FOR ME AN ETERNITY; OR ITS PRACTICAL EQUIVALENT TILL THE DIFFERENCE FAILS AND ALL HOLDS FADE. THEN I’M OUT OF YOU, TIME. WHERE?”

My wandering mind leads me into sidepaths. There I lose my mind or the way. But instead, what do I find?

One day, my mind led me astray. When I woke up, it was the next day.

Therefore, I’m forced to come to a conclusion: The mind is in time. The mind is also in me. If the mind is in time and in me, what am I to time, or time to me? Given time, I’ll think that one out.

If the mind is in time and I’m in space, what would happen if space visits time in time, or time pays a visit to space in space? Will never the two meet? Or are they continuously together? Or ever on the verge of a visit, though each shies of the other’s territory, time remaining in time and space sticking to space, each never leaving where it’s at home? Is time at home in time, space in space? Then who are their neighbors, and their guests? What are their visiting hours? Where do they take a vacation? Time’s home is its own castle, but the same thing applies to space. Why are they such domestic creatures? Why don’t they go on a vagabond pilgrimage, with vagrancy ever on the loose? No, each is fortified in its fortress. They wouldn’t continue being themselves, were they to leave.

Therefore, I’ll go out of my way: I’ll go to them.

I pay a brief visit to time, but overstay my leave, and am courteously but firmly reminded that the hour is late and that my host, time, is busy with lots of calendar appointments and punctuality schedule, so he has no more time for me. That is, time has no more of itself for me. He’s run out of himself for spending it with me. “Some other time,” he says, escorting me to the door in no uncertain terms, as though tactfully to throw me out. I can take a hint. He’s so subtle, he’s almost blunt. He wants to get rid of me. But as I’m being thrown out, I linger a foot in the door so it can’t close, and fling my parting words: “ ‘Some other time,’ you say? That means ‘some other you,’ since you’re time. I thought all time was only one you, but now I see you’re sliced up into a new you for each period of time, a whole departmentalization of different you’s. Inherently you suffer from split personalities all the time. Put yourself together, time. Integrate yourself. Have at least some consistency, for identification’s sake. You’ve already forsaken uniformity. But be at least always you. Don’t confuse how you’re recognized. You’re time whom I’ve visited. ‘It’s about time to go,’ you say: meaning, ‘it’s about you that I go.’ I go from you, but I’m still in you or my mind is, which is almost me. So even as I leave, I leave in you. I part from you, in you. But where are you, time? You’re at home now; but aren’t you also out in me? I’ll take you with me, time. You’re bound to me, I to you. We’re stuck together, like bedfellows with their bed in common on their backs, the wandering snail always at home. For you’re my home, and I’m never leaving you, since your span is world-wide, and your open wings extend to eternity, if not beyond. You’re also infinite, and spatial. I’m only mortal. To rectify my mortality, I need more of you, time. I want to tap your eternal source, to draw lifelong immortality in one brimming bucket from your bottomless country well. Restore my youth in magic; repair my prime; give wisdom a retroactive second chance to apply itself to previous situations where its absence had been fatally conspicuous.

“I want command over my past, to repeat its good passages and relive its friendly moments, I enlist you, time, in my service. With you in hand, I’m ever more resourceful, and can face adversity with singular courage, knowing that I can make a ‘comeback’ by walking through nostalgia’s invisible walls to doctor anything that went wrong long ago. Stop being mysterious, time. I’ll have you domesticated, as my creature, to do my powerful bidding, and employ your magic to my solid benefit.

“When my empire attaches you to me, I’ll be reinforced. Then, time, we’ll venture out together, and team up in the invasion and conquest of space which would complete my spiritual empire.”

For what’s next, once I’ve annexed as satellite captives those two former masters of mine, whom I overthrew and who are now in bondage to me? That’s the very limit of my territory; I’ll stop there, and call it a day. I’ll pause for no rest in the coils of death, since death will have no place in my life, my life so fortified in the taming of those terrible twins, time and space. What games we’ll play, and have fun! Ah, the possibilities! Mathematically inexhaustible combinations! Us three, dallying with the world a small toy. We’ll grow up and be ready for the universe there’s deadly sport, which only maturity can undertake.

With time and space on my side, I’m undaunted by the prospect of tussling with that huge giant, the universe. But once he’s overcome, then what? New fields for conquest. An open hunt, into the unknown.

Are those delusions of grandeur? Then let me delude on, a grander expander, if only by mind. In the mind, I’m king. There I make up my own rules, and change them by my own fit or pet of peeve or whim. I’m solidly enthroned. I make up things, as I go along with the mind’s consent. I’m granted by it unlimited creative license, to spin whatever, on scroll or tapestry, or fabulous fabric. By skill of magic, I weave my tale. All those characters are happening! Look at them, outside! They’re in the world, real. They’re really there. I didn’t fabricate them, they happened. Along the fringe of my mind. They dance along the mind’s border half in, half out. I know them, I call to them, they’re friends, colleagues, sharers of an age. See, they heed my call, they wave back. Some are approaching they enter my mind, where they’re accorded kingly hospitality, regal entertainment, in style. Ah, the reception they get! They’re my companions of phases along the patchwork of a lifetime. In my mind they appear: doubly real. Reality redoubled. Like a bank manager’s personal endorsement of a check, my mind confirms and authenticates these people as valid. I met them outside now they’re internalized. They’ll always have a home, in me by my heart’s hearth, my crackling fireplace, where they come out of the cold to warm up and dry out. Welcome! The welcome mat is always out. They tread on my dreams lightly, for they’re the dreams they tread on. They’ll be buried right in my human mind, if they happen externally to die. If I die, I’ll be in theirs. It’s a help, against the outer cold.

The mental communication. My fellow men, welcome! “Time, stand by me. Don’t leave. I need you, with all the people I know. They occur in you, I occur in you. You contain us. You’re our space. You must bulge, as a vessel.

“Don’t empty us out, yet. Contain us with no sieves to slip through. We’re all entangled, in this mental pyramid of people in contact. In time: through you, dear capacious time. Your voluminous capacity. Hold on to us. We flop and spill over, in the bottom, but don’t slip out. May your bottom be solid. And don’t juggle too hard in our violent tossing. Keep us in you. Keep us going. Preserve us. Apply preservatives, or cubes of ice that can’t wilt. Keep us here in you, time. Keep us, in your spinning jug. We’re all here. It’s a carefree party.”