{"id":1654,"date":"2021-03-05T18:43:02","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T23:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=1654"},"modified":"2021-03-05T18:43:02","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T23:43:02","slug":"the-terrible-slopes-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2021\/03\/05\/the-terrible-slopes-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"The Terrible Slopes of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once Geryon had gone<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

With his fourth-grade class to view a pair of beluga whales newly captured\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

From the upper rapids of the Churchill River.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Afterwards at night he would lie on his bed with his eyes open thinking of\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The whales afloat<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In the moonless tank where their tails touched the wall – as alive as he was\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

On their side\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Of the terrible slopes of time. <\/span><\/em>What is time made of?<\/span> Geryon said suddenly<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Turning to the yellowbeard who<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Looked at him surprised. <\/span><\/em>Time isn\u2019t made of anything. It is an abstraction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Just a meaning that\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We impose upon motion. But I see <\/span>– he looked down at his watch –<\/em> <\/span>what you mean.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t want to be late\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For my own lecture would I? Let\u2019s go.<\/span><\/p>\n

Autobiography of Red, <\/span>90<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The moment before this passage, Geryon sees a list of names belonging to \u201cprofessors detained or disappeared\u201d hanging on the wall, and tries not to focus on any one of them in particular. He wonders, \u201cSuppose it was the name of someone alive. In a room or in pain or waiting to die\u201d (90). This thought plunges him into the memory of his fourth-grade field trip, and Geryon sees a connection between missing people, \u201calive\u2026 in a room or in pain or waiting to die,\u201d and the captured whales, who are also alive, in an enclosed tank, their freedom taken from them, waiting to die. I struggled to understand the lines \u201cas alive as he was\/on their side\/of the terrible slopes of time,\u201d but I think they show Geryon identifying with the whales and their lack of freedom, and places him at the same point as the whales in their respective timelines. I imagine \u201cthe terrible slopes of time\u201d as a mountain, or a roller coaster – beginning at the bottom with birth, climbing to the peak, and falling downward towards death. If Geryon is as alive as the whales are, and he is on their side of the slopes of time, does that mean that both he and the whales are on the downward slope, heading toward death? Is that how Geryon imagines his life progressing, as a fourth-grader lying in bed late at night – a captive in a cage, already falling down the \u201cterrible slopes of time\u201d? I\u2019m reminded of the moment earlier in the text when Geryon, his brother, and their babysitter are discussing weapons, and Geryon says his favorite weapon is a cage (33). At various moments throughout the text, Geryon seems preoccupied with cages and captivity, and here he connects that feeling of being caged with ideas about time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Geryon\u2019s thoughts suddenly jolt him back to the present moment with a question: what is time made of? I think there is a connection here between time, cages, and queerness, and \u201cthe yellowbeard\u201d helps to put it into words. \u201cTime is an abstraction,\u201d he says – time is just a concept, with no meaning beyond that which people impose upon it. This imposed meaning, however, is central to existence within a cis- and heteronormative society. The yellowbeard\u2019s next comment shows that although he recognizes time as an abstraction, he is still bound by its practical purpose: \u201c\u2018<\/span>But I see <\/span><\/i>– he looked down at his watch – <\/span>what you mean.\/Wouldn\u2019t want to be late\/For my own lecture would I? Let\u2019s go.<\/span><\/i>\u201d The yellowbeard, like the vast majority of people, experiences time as a practical measurement of motion, which he has to adhere to for his own sake and the sake of others. I think Geryon, on the other hand, experiences time in a less straightforward, more queer way. In \u201cIn a Queer Time and Place,\u201d Halberstam argues that queer experiences of time oppose a \u2018normal\u2019 or \u2018standard\u2019 timeline of birth, marriage, reproduction, old age, and finally death – Geryon\u2019s \u201cterrible slopes of time.\u201d To a fourth-grader witnessing \u201cnewly captured\u201d whales and suddenly aware that they will likely spend the rest of their lives in captivity, this \u2018normal\u2019 timeline may feel like a cage. However, the moments of Geryon\u2019s adult life that Carson presents align with Halberstam\u2019s ideas about queer time: \u201cqueerness as an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and eccentric economic practices\u201d (Halberstam 1). <\/span>Autobiography of Red<\/span><\/i> shows Geryon as an adult whose future timeline does not conform to \u201cthose paradigmatic markers of life experience – namely, birth, marriage, reproduction, and death\u201d (Halberstam 2); rather than settle down, get married, have children, and eventually die, Geryon travels the world, asks strangers what time means to them, captures his life in photographs, and outlives the end of his biography. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once Geryon had gone With his fourth-grade class to view a pair of beluga whales newly captured\u00a0 From the upper rapids of the Churchill River.\u00a0 Afterwards at night he would lie on his bed with his eyes open thinking of\u00a0 The whales afloat In the moonless tank where their tails touched the wall – as … Continue reading The Terrible Slopes of Time<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[169388,93554,867],"class_list":["post-1654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post","tag-autobiography-of-red","tag-queer-time","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}