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it's about time

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 1 month ago

"Nobody delivers on time except by accident. The addict runs on junk time. His body is his clock, and junk runs through it like an hourglass. Time has meaning for him only with reference to his need. Then he makes his abrupt intrustion into the time of others, and, like all Outsiders, all Petitioners, he must wait, unless he happens to mesh with non-junk time." (__Naked Lunch__, pg 180)

I love this paragraph. We already know that the junk world is a whole separate world from the "ordinary" world. But now we're told that it's not only a separate world, but it's also a separate dimension. Time in junk world isn't a flat line like time in ordinary world -- it isn't broken up into days and hours and minutes and seconds and miliseconds and tick and tock and time zones and a.m./p.m. and early and late and on-time and soon and later and now and then and when and onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve. Junk time is an absolute mess... a jumble of spirals that never end and and clash into each other and don't stop moving. Junk time actually isn't really time at all -- it's just an obstacle to need. The time -- like the cops and the informers and the law -- just gets in the way of a junky's need for junk. If it were up to him, he would just exist in the junk world with his junk and without all the ticktocking of "time" telling him when he can and cannot have what he needs. A junky stepping into the ordinary world and clashing with ordinary time is like somebody stepping outside during a blizzard without any clothes on. (Now there's an image for __Naked Lunch__.) It's abrupt and violent and uncomfortable and, to the junky, completely unnecessary.

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