the pandemic
I write “the pandemic”, hoping that I won’t ever have to disambiguate.
A few months into the pandemic, I moved from Houston, where I had lived for 21 years, to Boston, where I would be, at least, doing a PhD for 6 years. And I grew a little bit obsessed with time.
Every day felt the same, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling of time marching on. Events still happened, breakups and spats and new friendships amongst my social circle back in Houston, but my actual experience was waking up every day, moving 3 feet to my desk, working, eating, sleeping, repeating. I grew really obsessed with Groundhogs Day, Palm Springs… media about time loops.
I recently played Before Your Eyes, and a few months before I had played Outer Wilds. Both are games where time plays a central role, but I’ve been struggling to figure out what they actually have to say about time. More specifically, do they have a moral? Some advice? Or are they just laments about the pain that time brings? Both games involve the futility of holding on to dying worlds, both involve the melancholy of moving forward. Yes, moving forward leads to new beauty, but both games recognize and do not judge the desperate sadness of trying to hold on to what you had.
We build stability, and want to stay comfortable for as long as possible, but time causes everything to decay. I feel my closest friendships from Houston slipping away, and the desperate need to maintain them, all the while feeling the same desperation as I build something anew in Boston, knowing that any real relationships will take time to build, the same time that will strip them away as my life continues to evolve.
