'Time flies like an arrow'
Substack anniversary = also my 38th and 39th birthday anniversary ;-)
Two years ago I launched this Substack with my annual birthday calligraphy meditation. Last year I wrote another poem, to commemorate my 39th. Today — on my 40th birthday eve — I continue the tradition by meditating on a Chinese phrase that means ‘the passing of time’.
光陰, the passing of time “Time is the enemy” were my daddy’s last words so we held his hand and marched flank to flank to the frontline of the battle for the last breath. 光陰 / guāng yīn—it means ‘the passing of time’ The word for light, before the word for darkness. The way the sun turns into night. 陰 is yīn—the yin before yang. An overcast word, radical 170 阝‘mound’ to the left and clouds obscuring sun 侌 on the right. 光陰似箭—‘time flies like an arrow’ I always believed the arrow of Time to be fleeing me, flung into an unlit jungle. But now I know that Time assaults me, its arrow whistling in from the right hand margin, stabbing the advance of my forward forging pen. Pierces the heart like a cartoon emoji <3 <======= ‘Now I am forty!’ I started declaring three months prematurely (always precocious even in middle age) to spare people the pantomime of congratulation (and/or backhanded commiseration) but mainly to rehearse what it feels like to be ahead of Time. To attack my attacker. Do you hear the rustle of dry grass, catch a flick of black in the savannah? I’m stalking waiting crouched to pounce every hair on my body erect and ticking like the ambush of a merciless minute hand. Let me hold the bow, just this once. <3 ====== > Oh daddy Time flew away from me. Time crept up on me. I have passed to the other side, to dwell in the shadow of the vertiginous mountain. I am in the yin of my life now. Oh daddy we can’t fight Time, we need to make friends marching hand in hand into the silent night. Sometimes before my eyes close to wake up one less time I experience a moment so horribly bright: sun, warmth, in my whole being. A reminder that tomorrow begins the rest of my life. And then I surrender. And then it is light.
To mark my 40th, I worked with long-time collaborator Ming Tang-Evans on some new portraits. We paid deep homage to Peter Hujar’s 1975 portrait of Susan Sontag, capturing me in my two favourite relaxation spots at home. Our homage is commentary not just on Hujar’s lens, but on filmmaker John Water’s remarks on both Hujar and Sontag in a 2024 FT Magazine article, which we couldn’t get out of our heads. ‘She looks, almost against her will, pretty… Peter’s talent was to catch you when you were not playing yourself. And all of these people knew how to play themselves.’
Ming and I don’t wish to go too deep; the portraits are not intended as meta-[meta-commentary]commentary. Nevertheless, portraiture has always been an empowering way for people to play themselves. For me, it’s a way to play against the expectations that people have put on me over time (and more pertinently, those I put on myself). At my request, there was zero retouch on these images; unlike those we took three years ago, when I felt resentful of every contour on my face.
Sifting through the images, Ming and I landed on a diptych that presented as a mirror in more than one way. There are the reflective poses that contrast the warmth of my upstairs living room - with its north-facing window - and the colder clime of my basement bedroom - which invites light from the south. But the yin-yang diptych itself also unintentionally mirrors my poem; the twin portraits like two sides of the overcast mountain from which I contemplate the passing of time…
