Anaphora (an-aph’-o-ra): Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.
Time is a pain in the ass. Time is a cleaver that cuts up life. Time is anxiety’s husband and wife. I used to wear a watch. I used to look at it too often, worried about being on time—as if time is a surface under my feet like my lawn or my living room floor, or a cliff overlooking a rocky abyss with bones strewn at the bottom. So, I stopped wearing a watch. I put a piece of duct tape over the clock on my iPhone. I put away all the clocks in my house and taped over the microwave and oven clocks. When I was home, I didn’t know what time it was, until I noticed night and day induced by sunrise and sunset. Night and day are vague approximations of time, but they measure time nevertheless. So, I blacked out my windows. I would used lightbulbs to manage time as much as I was willing to manage it. But really, lights on was about being able to read and traverse my home without tripping and falling down—in other words, “light” was about seeing, dark, about not seeing.
After awhile, after completing my timeless regime, my boss called me and asked me where the hell I was. I quit, right there on the phone. I have my IRA and was eligible for Social Security. I stood to make more money by quitting!
I still had a time vestige or two that were almost impossible to shed—when I said “soon” or “sooner or later” I was doing time talk. I actually wanted to excise “soon” from my approach to life. But sadly, I bear “soon” in my body, along with other unavoidable aspects of time’s rootedness in consciousness. Given this realization, and the frustrating struggles it induced, I reconsidered my ay attempt to evade time. So, I want in the opposite direction—I timed everything. I wore a stopwatch around my neck and carried a pen and small notepad. I timed my toothbrushing. I timed putting on my shoes. I timed how long it took to go from my bedroom to the kitchen. I even timed how long it took to urinate! I changed my screen name to Father Time. I bought five cuckoo clocks that chorus every 30 minutes.
Now that I am immersed in time, I am pestered by the prospect of being early, on time, or late. Pestered. What does that mean? I am cowed. I am laid low. I am crushed. I am enslaved. Time is my master, I can’t master time.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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