Storm King

Phil said, “we’re living Einstein’s theory of relativity…time changes based on perspective.” One day last week, shattered, he’d swept me off the floor and had taken me out for a walk. We realized we are in a spaceship: we exercise, eat, watch movies, drive the ship a little, tend tomato plants, play music, cook, write, go on hikes (it’s a big spaceship)… Because we move at the speed of light, it seems like nothing much changes within our ship. We grow beards—Phil, me, Killian, Cally, the cat (the dog already has one)…and only when friends and relatives make contact, and seeing their beards grey, do we realize how different the passing of time has been for them. They talk about plans. It’s hard to imagine how we can possibly reconcile the differences in time. We decline plans. This upsets some people, adding worry lines to their grey-bearded faces. We think about putting a sign on our door that reads, “no grey-bearded, sad or worried faces allowed,” but realize it would only mystify those entering an already mystifying situation.

When Killian feels well, we feel like we have time, the same kind of time everyone else is keeping. When he doesn’t feel well, time conflates. There are hours in a day now when we keep the same time as the rest of the world, not days in a week.

Sometimes Killian animates—most often for visitors. He decided, suddenly, he was well enough to go to Storm King Sunday. We walked Maya Lin’s Wave Field. We watched Cally run the waves, arms outstretched, using momentum from down to run up, making like a bobbing sailboat. They fought in the car on the way home, then they slept, leaning on each other for the rest of the ride. If the slice of that day were all you saw, you might not understand how things have changed.