Contagion: An essay in time

Time knows three speeds: fast, slow, still.

Fast is when a night out is ruled out and a night in creeps in. Fast is when you fly, Kathmandu to Boston, hours before the gates go up. Fast is the fog that appears in front of my eyes, heavy and open for information, staring for too long. Fast is emergency Cabinets, hushed highstreets, and fresh sand upon empty shores. Fast is China's military, Italy's ICU, and Australia's absorbent paper aisles.

Slow is working. Working inches from your pillow. Slow is waiting for new information, stronger information, certainty if we would be so lucky. Slow is the sky in the suburbs, where I've now moved, to keep time when time refuses to be kept. Slow are the clouds – mostly cumulus here, pale pink wafting into deep blue. Slow is reading a novel while the kookaburras orchestrate and the cicadas perform their nightly recital.

But time, fast and slow as it may seem, can, if you let it, be still. Time stills when we think of anything but time. It's time before it gets fast or slow, before it registers as a concept to which we give meaning. They say time heals, but this variation of time doesn't, because nothing here needs healing. You know when this time happens? It happens when you sit. And watch the breath. And see it’s possible to separate from all the world's noise. Here, there is a voyage toward peace. In times ahead, I hope we choose this dimension of time.