Why you DO Have enough time....
On White Rabbits, candles and the quirks of Oxford Time
"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!"
The White Rabbit - Alice in Wonderland
Imagine me, if you will, in my kitchen, the island overflowing with items to be read, responded to, ironed, tidied away, or eaten when I get a moment. I am on the phone dealing with an urgent issue in my volunteer job and holding another call at the same time. I am struggling to communicate via online chat with the online seller whose courier has lost my elderly relative’s newly ordered and badly needed walking aid. The notification chimes on my email and WhatsApp apps sound like a child with a xylophone who has just eaten a bowl of M&Ms. My husband is calling from the lounge and the DPD deliveryman is ringing the doorbell. The microwave is insistently peeping to remind me that I am not drinking the tea that I reheated because I didn’t drink it the first time it was hot. A text arrives telling me I need to go and pick up a prescription.
I glance at the clock. According to my attempts to impose a creative schedule, I should have been in my writing shed thirty-seven minutes ago
.
I am three days late posting my monthly newsletter for paid subscribers. I know that the world will not end (or probably even notice) if my email is a little delayed, but I mind because writing – this email and even more so a fiction project - is what I intend and I can’t get to it. All I want to do this morning is sit in that shed and use the fantastic fiction plotting software I bought recently. I want to sit in an empty space and think and journal about what happens to my characters. Then I want to enjoy typing the last in my Festival Series newsletters, a piece about the Jewish festival of Hannukah.
I am not getting what I want. I feel panicked and resentful.
I don’t have enough time.
Imagine that scene, even as you think to yourself: well obviously that’s not true because I have right here in my inbox an email from her about Hannukah. Hold that picture of panic in your mind. We will come back to its relevance to you and your creativity. But for now let’s take a trip back in time, back to about 500 years or so into the common era.
Imagine: We are in the heat of what is now modern-day Iraq. At a desk, in a cool house, sits a solitary scribe with a turkey feather quill. The scratching of the whittled cartilage nib, the occasional squeaking of his chair, and the gentle puff of his breath are the only sounds in the room. He concentrates on the precise details of every inky stroke as it settles onto the parchment. The only measure of time he has is the shadow gradually creeping across the floorboards.
He is writing a book called the Gemara, which comprises a commentary on an earlier legal book called the Mishnah. Earlier today he was adding some technical ‘halachic’ material expounding on rules and regulations. Now however he is working on a piece of ‘aggadah’. He is writing a story.
Like all creators, he is building on a heritage. Josephus the historian has already written his account of an event first described by the Maccabees. It is an ancient tale and also a modern tale, of warfare and resistance and land grabbing and freedom gaining and celebration of the survival of a people and their ways. It has already been well recorded factually but now our scribe is going to add a twist. He dips the quill in his ink, made from gallnut juice and gum, and begins.
In Jerusalem, the Maccabees have been kept away from their temple, their sacred place for too long. When they finally get back there it is weed-ridden, broken, and desolate. It is not the warm richly furnished place they held in their memory. Judah, their leader, sends them away to attend to other tasks while he sets to, restructuring the cherished dream. He rehangs the curtains and brings in new furniture. He rebuilds the altar and locates some fragrant incense. All this is known from history, but our scribe takes care to redescribe it, to remind and record anew. Then he goes a step further. He fills in a gap.