Some Thoughts on Solstice and Other Kinds of Time

I am obsessed with time. Overwhelmed by it.

It irritates me that so much time has passed since I last wrote; that I never have the time to write. This last month of days that stretch the sun so long, has taken me with it. I can barely tell you where I am in time and space and this is unusual for me.

I have time-space synaesthesia. It's called other things too, but 'time-space' feels like space-time and that makes it sound like something Carl Sagan would care about. Like other kinds of synaesthesia, I have unusual synaptic connections between my sensory receptors and other parts of my brain. For my mother, that means days of the week, months and others things, are drenched in colour. For me, time is a visual-spatial construct.

And that's quite hard to explain. Let me try. Imagine an oval in your mind's eye. Now, think of it in three dimensions and orientated at a slight angle. Now look at it slightly side-on. At the top of the oval think of January and now travel anti-clockwise along the line of the shape, adding the months as you go. Late winter into spring. Each month at an equal distance from the last, so that the northern hemisphere's summer months sit along the bottom of the oval and September to December climb back toward the top, through autumn and to winter. That's what I see in my head. At any given point in the year, my perspective is positioned on the oval: I can look forward to the coming months and back to those that have passed. And I can see the entire year at once.

Actually, it's not just that I can see time - I feel it. I don't have to consciously search my mind's eye to see where I am in the year because my body already knows it. The sensation attached to the thought of time is somatic - I feel it physically.

As you might surmise, this intimate relationship with time comes with an interest in memory. In fact, like others with this genetic quirk, I have an unusually detailed visual memory, particularly of my early life. This leads to conversations with my family that end with 'how on earth do you remember that?' It leads me to a probably unhealthy interest in the past: what I remember, how I remember, whether any of it makes sense.

And there's another thing: you know how you might visualise something you're looking forward to, or something you're dreading - to be excited by it or to try to prepare for it? I do that too, but to me these imaginaries are vivid and felt. An academic colleague recently suggested that my visualisations, and the sensations they produce, must manifest in the same region of the brain as actual memories. That made so much sense to me.

I'm writing about it, of course. Or I would be if I had the time. My job has a tendency to steal summers, and this one is no different. I mean, yes, I'm writing about it now, but I mean real writing - research, reflection, revelation. And it stings because this time of year is for reverie. So, instead, I will do the writing that we do in our heads - the thinking, the questions, some stolen reading here and there. Tending to the idea and giving time to thought.

Meanwhile, it is summer solstice in our hemisphere and, just as at winter, I fixate on the minute changes in light and darkness, and marvel at the happenstance of my geolocation and the 23.5 degree tilt in the axis of our planet. I know that summer will come and go and I can already feel the new academic year. I struggle for the present moment.

But there is one place in summer where time is both stretched and finite. It is on the oval field of a cricketing test match. This hardy competition between two teams will last a maximum of five days. The worst horrors can be playing out on the world's stage, governments can fall, but the test match goes on in some corner of it. Play begins at 11am each day and there are breaks for lunch and tea. In mid-summer, players spend long, hot hours in the field, or waiting their turn to bat in the cool of the dressing room. But the late-summer test match, the last of the year, when the final overs of the day are lit by a warm, low sun and the shadows lie long upon the grass, and the crowd is hazy with beer and reluctant for the end of play, is the best. It is an end of days: time, finally, is up.