heartbeats

there is a world i know of, where time is measured in heartbeats.

its children grow up double quickly to become adults and when their hearts slow down with age, they long for time to take an about turn and make them children again. it is a wonderful world in which everyone creates his or her own time. the old widow, sitting in her yellowed balcony, knitting a blue cardigan for her long departed husband seems eternal while the young officer, waving goodbyes from the train taking him to the border outpost from which he might return soon, wrapped in the Tricolor has agreed to be ephemeral. and by the time that government clerk will move files from one department to the other, his wife will have raised three daughters of marriageable age and he'll keep wondering where the time has gone. young lovers here, live in a creation of their own. the waiting minutes, take an eternity and the hours of togetherness exist as mere moments in existence.

this is a world in which life is measured in heartbeats. the slow, the measured live longer; the quick, the passionate die young.

as i wonder at the neighbourhood suddenly turned alive by playful children on their way to the park and their laughter fading into the fragrant echoes of memory, at the steam rising slowly out of my morning cup of tea and fading into eternity, at the time in just under ten minutes when i'll have to leave it all and rush towards earning a living out of creating stories, i feel, i too am a part of that world, the world in which time is measured in heartbeats.