Time is Water

Time spent outside of productivity is cast as wasted or squandered.

“I do not believe in time, I do believe in water.” Dionne Brand

In western time constructs, time is a limited resource. If we want to spend time outside of productivity we have to have earned it in some way, we can’t just have it.

I’ve been thinking about the ways that capitalism organizes time. Notice its undercurrents in language: “How are you spending your time?” “Don’t waste your time.” “Let’s save time and go this way.”

If time is water then small actions reverberate - sometimes to distances I cannot see, maybe to a generation that I won’t meet.

Marginalized people are criminalized for spending time outside of gaining capital

Time reverberates. Time is care. Time is water.

It is in our best interest to question the metronome of capitalism and the ways it arranges time, both structurally and interpersonally. It’s in our best interest to study the alternative clocks that exist. It’s in our best interest to offer curiosity around ways we can construct our own clocks.

Angela Davis on cultivating long range imagination: “We wouldn’t be here today had it not been the case that in the 1600s and 1700s there were Black people who believed in the possibility of freedom and we are the beneficiaries of that imagination.”