Alicia Velázquez: Hello time.
Time: Hello.
AV: Shall I call you using a capital letter in your name?
T: Yes please. I am royalty.
AV: I see. Are you royalty? What does that mean?
T: It means that I am untouchable and powerful.
AV: Ok. I can see that. Are you also human and down to earth?
T: What does that mean?
AV: I mean, do you come down to live with us humans in our petty everyday things? That is at least my impression of you. I can feel you right here, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, next to me in my bed.
T: Yes, of course. I am around you, next to you, I wrap you and hold you. I am your everything and reason of your existence. But I am still distant and unable to be catch, or petted.
AV: Does that mean that I need to knee at you?
T: No, please. No need to do that. But be aware that I am no friend. I don’t negotiate.
AV: What a pity. But I already had a sense of that boundary with you, of course. Why do you think we, humans, believe you are negotiable?
T: You are stupid.
AV: Why do we lose sense of your presence so often?
T: You do not loose me or my presence. You simply forget I am there. And that I rule. You humans have this thing call the ego, and you often believe that you rule and that all on this reality happens to you and because of you. You are still believing, in a way, that you are the center of the universe and the sun and stars loop around you.
AV: And other humans as well.
T: Right. When you are taken by this assumption, you simply forget that I am actually the one ruling this kingdom.
AV: Are you male or female?
T: I have no gender or physical form. I simply am.
AV: Why do we need to understand matter in order to grasp you?
T: You are not programmed to go very far understanding things that aren’t physical, or that have no physical and logic translation into the simplistic form your brain is able to grasp. Think about it as if you are trying to teach an animal who lives in the mountain, in a small farm, explain to that animal what the ocean is and how it feels to see and bathe in it. There is no space or machinery in its system to understand what that means.
AV: I see. Well, I actually don’t see. Because we can never see you. We cannot even sense you. You are there, then you are not.
T: Right. The only thing that you are able to capture is my presence through the physicality of things and their transformation.
AV: Is there such thing as what we call “the pass of time”?
T: No. It is a concept you have invented. I do not pass. I am there, eternally. Only humans and things pass. That is yet another phrase coined by your limitation and your own self-centered vision of your existence. I do not change. I do not come and go. I do not transform. I simply am. You are the ones that come and go, transform, again and again. Everything physical does, without stop.
AV: Are you god?
T: No. Do not try to fit me into a figure of control. I rule, because I exist. But I am not the goal for you to attain or to pray to. I only need respect and acknowledgement of my presence and being. The rest is up to you.
AV: Why do we need to measure you? Why do I need to measure you in my work?
T: You do it to understand and package me. It is your way of getting to reason me, packaging. You need to process me in a way that is simplistic enough for your mind to understand.
AV: Are you home (for me)?
T: No. I am not. I cannot be anybody’s home. Only physical things can be home.
AV: But you feel to me so important in all what I do.
T: Yes indeed. I am important for everything you all humans do.
AV: Does counting you, packaging you and numbering you help me to respect you?
T: Not really. But it is a way where you are starting to acknowledge my presence and make sense of my presence. By counting and numbering me you give me a body.
AV: I see. That kind of makes sense. What shall I do with you?
T: Nothing. You can’t do anything with me or to me or without me. As I said in the very beginning, I rule. I can do things to you and with you, never the other way around.
AV: But we do have to collaborate, right?
T: I don’t collaborate. You negotiate with yourself, perhaps also with others, ways in which you get things done around my rules. But I am non negotiable. Neither I am a collaborator. I set the rules, you decide how to move around them. Or through them.
AV: Is breathing one of your tools to control us? Or to make yourself present to us?
T: No. Breathing only gives you a count of my presence, my being. And also of your own being. Breathing happens through me, like everything else. Getting aware of your breathing, of the fact that you breathe may take you closer to getting my presence, and its meaning for your existence.
AV: Wow, I have to say that I fear you and at the same time I am totally compelled by you. And honored to be ruled by such a huge presence. Although I also have to say that I am afraid of you.
T: Why?
AV: Because I feel so small and with no power whatsoever.
T: Not over me. But you do rule and have power over many other things in this world you inhabit.
AV: Although you will always be above.
T: Yes, those were the rules for this world to start. I can never be killed. (oh you humans have this very funny expression of “killing time”, it makes me laugh hahahahaha)
AV: I can imagine :-) We are so hopeless, right?
T: Yes, haha, you are. You guys are tiny although you make your lives grand - and you can - and you make each others’ lives so difficult sometimes.
AV: How does my work, my practice, relate with you and how are you letting me deal with things? Are you setting my practice’s boundaries?
T: No, only you can do that. Your work does not mean anything to me, neither anybody’s work. I am amused by it, honored to be respected and acknowledged rather than fought or forgotten. But your work is your mission, not my mission. I don’t even have a mission. I do not project wishes. I simply am, and rule.
AV: Yes, you said that already.
T: Does that bother you?
AV: I have to say, yes! It does! It bothers me that you are so powerful, that you never go away, that you are going to influence me no matter what, that I cannot get rid of you, or negotiate or trick you, that you control everything. Why caring then?
T: Well, I am giving you a huge bag of myself only for you to enjoy and use. For your own good, for others good. Don’t you want to use it as wisely as possible?
AV: Of course. I thank you for this big opportunity of enjoying physical world in your kingdom. Or queendom. Or youdom. Timedom. I can see you are dominating because you simply are, which is different than our dominating through our egos, because you do not have an ego. Yet your dominance arises my ego to respond.
T: Yes, that is inevitable. As long as you see it, we are ok.
AV: This has been a very interesting conversation. May I come back to you with more questions in the future, if they arise?
T: Sure. I will always be here.
AV: Thank you.
Mind Time is an interview conducted through writing on June 28th 2016