Passing Through

A short impression from the weight of years


Time had passed, I noticed as I entered the little stone cabin where I had once lived. Time had passed through these rooms and left a faint trace of dust and spiderwebs in its wake. Its footsteps were cracks in the floor where tiny ferns peeked through. Its fingerprints were large flakes of paint peeling off the walls. Sunlight filtered through a metal mesh outside the cracked window and fell onto the floor, inviting the sensation of a movement, but nothing moved in its way. Where once there had been life and change there was now only static air. Insects lay dead on the floor and even the hovering dust particles were so still they seemed frozen in flight. Time had been here, but it was not here anymore.

Time had passed by, and I had somehow failed to notice it. Had I looked in the wrong direction? Had I been blind to its appearance? Where had my head been during all these years that had taken on such a solid conserved form here? I had always thought myself acutely aware of past, present and future, and the changes there within, but perhaps I had been too busy theorizing about them to truly experience them while they happened.

Time had passed by me. But I had not felt it. Even now, standing in the middle of my old kitchen, fully taking in the detriment its passing had left my former surroundings in, I myself felt curiously untouched by time. My hands showed no scars, my senses sent the same experiences through the same nerves, and my mind kept stumbling in the same circles. Age had not changed me. Time had passed me by.