2023-07-20 17:18:00
I hadn’t realized everything that time contains, until I came face to face with the minute 10:01.
There was something that made me look at him and stop. I don’t know, maybe the intrepidity of presenting himself only with zeros and ones, or the arrogance of being palindromic. He just got me.
To him, it seemed that everything was happening very slowly. Unusual thing.
On the breakfast table of a downtown hotel in Mar del Plata, he was trapped in the dark screen of my cell phone.
The aroma of my second cup of latte.
The constant rattling of cutlery, which seemed to resist being replaced, by the tall, thin waiter, on the recently vacated table.
The rhythmic tapping of fingers on the computer keyboard of the woman, her hair tied up in a makeshift bun held by a pen, from the next table.
The silence that accompanies the woman in the improvised bun as she looks up as if looking for that information that was suspended between the upper edge of the computer screen and the ceiling of the hotel restaurant in the center of Mar del Plata.
The croissant slowly submerging into the cup of the man in the green shirt, with mustaches and curly hair, sitting at the opposite table.
The croissant crumbs hidden in the mustache confused between the mouth and the nose of its wearer.
This minute moves slow. Perhaps many things had to happen in it and it slowed down for them to happen.
The same did not happen with the minutes between 09:15 and 10:00. I know. Those ran between the time I entered the restaurant and I was trapped in the contemplation of time.
All those minutes were rushing by. But not the minute 10:01. He seems not to have realized that it was Tuesday morning, when the hours sacrifice themselves to lack of time and meekly give themselves up as they pass.
He did not understand anything and was suspended in ecstasy by everything that could happen in his existence. He entertained himself between the tables set for breakfast and the music playing hide and seek with the words, which between brownies and croissants, manage to escape.
This minute, complicit in my attention, laughs at the time that calls it to be extinguished.
And finally he catches it. The turn of 10:02 arrives. My attention, again fixed on the cell phone screen, notes that he is no longer there.
I take the last sip of my latte. I keep my book in my backpack. I move the chair. I grab my things and go.
It’s already 10:06. I remember everything I have to do, the scarcity of my time, the transience of the minutes. It’s too late for me to continue living and I remember melancholically at minute 10:01.
My attention, like a puppy waiting for its master with the leash in its mouth, is ready to come out. But I don’t have time anymore. And my attention returns to crouch in haste, waiting for the moment to play again.
*By Valentina Masjoan – Psychologist and writer. Registration number 9660
Instagram @valentinamasjoan
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