WORLD ENOUGH, AND TIME.

....................by Stanley

......I remember vividly – something Somerset Maugham said: “Now that I am 90 I have more time than I have ever had”. Being young then myself it seemed an amazing thing to say. Being young, as the young are, I was always in a hurry. A hurry in life and a hurry in love. That must have been why Andrew Marvel’s poem To His Coy Mistress appealed to me so much. You remember how it goes:

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day…
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lieDeserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.

.....It is as though time has always been my enemy. If I had been born into another family or another culture I could have been a mad Christian sure that the end of the world was nigh. It’s why I can’t wait in queues for anything; it’s why I can’t waste time and have to keep busy; it’s why I am obsessively on time for appointments – I hate to waste other people’s time; it’s why the goal has been more important than the journey; it’s why I have a clock in every room; and why when asked if I am hungry I look at my watch.
......It’s not all my fault though. My training for time wasn’t good. I was breast fed on schedule – brought up on time’s rack, you might say. When the great moment did come it was so valuable that I guzzled and was sick. Then there was the incredible drag of waiting and the ache for the next time. Not a terribly good mindset for the future.
......Maybe that was why, like Andrew Marvell in that poem, I was always in a hurry for love. I seemed to have an ongoing feeling that I would miss out. Lovemaking was always a bit of a gallop too. But like time, the scarcity of love, is endemic in our culture. That’s why we talk so much about sex.
......Even the Pope is now talking about sex. He goes all the way to Australia to apologise for the fact that over 100 catholic priests have been sentence in Australian courts for sexual offences. That’s only in Australia, never mind Ireland or the rest of the world where they have covered up their juicy sins more successfully. What he doesn’t apologise for is the reason Catholic Priests – and really the rest of Christendom – is so obsessed with sex. Why doesn’t he get up say:
“Look fellars, I’ve just had an Infallible Idea – this is really ridiculous – its time we caught up with the 20th century. Why don’t you priests all go out and get married. After all, Paul said, ‘Its better to marry than to burn with passion’ – and you priests Down Under seem to be burning with quite a of lot of passion !”
......But he won’t say this will he? In the religious area of life time has really stood still. It is as though we are still in the Middle Ages. The body is still the enemy. Part of our culture is frozen in time, much as part of an individual can be frozen in the past. Just like my love life was frozen when my mother was afraid of feeling sexual when she was breast feeding me. Love and sex are part of the melody of life that sing together.
.......Some women even have a full blown orgasm when they are breast feeding – its nature’s reward for doing her work properly. But in the religious, archaic corner of our culture its God’s work that’s supposed to be done – not Nature’s. And we pay for it dearly. Each one of us – we pay for it because we can’t help embodying the neurosis deep within us, whether we are Christians or not. We are not quite as bad as the Pontiff, but inside we each carry a little frozen, archetypal Jesus, stuck back in time, throwing his shadow across our lives – while we hurry forward, knowing somehow we are missing out on something.