Time is money. If we were to throw all the money in the world into an unrestrainable fire, would time then stop? Would everything turn into stone, would a steadfast eternity defy the winds? Or would everything be reduced to ashes and it would only be a matter of minutes before all these ashes would be scattered in all directions, becoming invisible? Would the provoked movement be such that time would have no more grip, and could not do anything more than powerlessly assist the unfolding of events?
To live means to struggle. Strange to think about the amount of people that would agree with this, each one giving it their own meaning. Yet… the alarm-clock rings and jolts us into the ring, we try to remember but actually, we no longer know whether, in the meantime, we ever quit this ring. Struggling against time. The thought of being able to win keeps us on the ring, little does it matter at which point the stage starts becoming disfigured. The rules are fixed, and to all of those who pay attention to the rules, they’ve learned that endurance is their best asset.
The worker or the employee knows that the hands of a clock turn, that the partition is far from equal, but if they stay long enough within the four walls of an office or a factory, the rest of time will be their own. Pained to see a few more years being nibbled off, endurance will be once again put to the test. For the unemployed the clock also turns, but this doesn’t bring them any loss because they takes their time, or they sink away more everyday because they do not know what to do with all this time that they prefers giving it up to some boss or a company as fast as possible. The boss loves time, he can see the evolution on his bank account and the end of the month doesn’t scare him the least bit. Even though his sleep is occasionally upset by some workers who take back some time for themselves through sabotages and strikes.
And then you have those who want to free themselves forever. They look around themselves and steal time wherever they can, diverting it from what we would want it to be, attacking that which makes this time unchangeable and yet melts in our hands.
The world of steel mechanisms and icy desires knows how to ever more skilfully hypnotize time to put it to the service of its necessary rhythm. Putting us at the service of its necessary rhythm. Therefore, trains and roads overflow, especially during the morning and in the late afternoon, of all of those who pay for their race against time with their lives. Without realizing that time has already won, will always win as long as it will elapse at the service of this world. Nevertheless in general we mistake the consolation prize with the jackpot, and the whole world goes home thinking that they won time. This unhealthy reverence can only prove that time is never really ours for very long. Even for those who manage to seize it shortly from its usual guardians, time stays an undefeated enemy. For those who despite themselves, don’t find the time for these wanderings of conquests, it remains an unchallengeable enemy, a perfect master.
But what if we no longer want to postpone feeling relieved from the weight of time on our shoulders? Wouldn’t it be such a pleasure to shatter all clocks, and to never look at them again? Wouldn’t it be an indescribable party, almost impossible to really grasp, to expropriate all at once all the time of routines and its masters? Not to go back, not to stop time but to completely make it estranged from its domination, and then to forget it…
[Salto, subversion & anarchie, n. 1, Bruxelles, may 2012)