In one of the final chapters of The Hours by Michael Cunningham,
moments right after Richard’s suicide, Clarissa rushes down (right now, only she knows he’s gone) and just rests her head against his back and breathes him in one last time; she “would like to speak to him but cant” — that scene broke me.
We can’t help but try to hold onto the moments we know must end. It’s like trying to hold sand. Still, we ask for “ten more minutes” when we know we must leave, we linger in doorways; we intentionally move slowly, as if even though we know we cannot change the inevitable, we cannot help but try to delay it.
What are those extra moments good for? What do they mean? They don’t change the outcome. Still, we try to cling onto something we know we cannot keep. We know it’s impossible to stop time, but cannot help but try anyway. Logically, we should know better. But love is not logical.
What is the significance of this futile fight against the laws of time and reality? It doesn’t accomplish anything. Perhaps that’s precisely why these moments matter. It’s one of the few instances where we can see the answer to the questions of
What would you do if your actions had no consequences?
What would you do if you knew nothing you did would change the outcome?
If people persist in an action that is knowingly useless, then the action must be motivated by something other than achieving an outcome. These moments show what we’re made of, and maybe what they are revealing is an unquenchable hope within us that exists despite all rhyme or reason.
Romans 5:3–4: Tribulation produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
People on a Bridge by Wisława Szymborska
Translation by Adam Czerniawski
A strange planet with its strange people.
The yield to time but don’t recognise it.
They have ways of expressing their protest.
They make pictures, like this one for instance:
At first glance, nothing special.
You see water.
You see a shore.
You see a boat sailing laboriously upstream.
You see a bridge over the water and people on the bridge.
The people are visibly quickening their step,
because a downpour has just started
lashing sharply from a dark cloud.
The point is that nothing happens next.
The cloud doesn’t change its colour or shape.
The rain neither intensifies nor stops.
The boat sails on motionless.
The people on the bridge
run just where they were a moment ago.
It’s difficult to avoid remarking here:
this isn’t by any means an innocent picture.
Here time has been stopped.
Its laws have been ignored.
It’s been denied influence on developing events.
It’s been insulted and spurned.
Thanks to a rebel,
a certain Hiroshige Utagawa
(a being which as it happens
has long since and quite properly passed away)
time stumbled and fell.
Maybe this was just a whim of no significance,
a freak covering just a pair of galaxies,
but we should perhaps add the following:
Here it’s considered proper
to regard this little picture highly,
admire it and thrill to it from age to age.
For some this isn’t enough.
They even hear the pouring rain,
they feel the cool drops on necks and shoulders,
they look at the bridge and the people
as if they saw themselves there
in the self-same never-finished run
along an endless road eternally to be travelled
and believe in their impudence
that things are really thus.