How time collapses

By: Isabel Brush-Mindell

The view from the author's favorite running route.

I. Routine

My feet pound the pavement as I descend the stairs. I slow at the crosswalk, waiting for the red figure to turn green, or for the cars to slow. A burst of speed. Cross the street. Pass the hotel. Look for the cars to the left. Then a block later to the right. I merge with the groups of ambling people walking from Palacio or Plaza España to Templo de Debod. My breathing deepens as I ascend the curving hill. My legs are moving fast today. I have started racing myself—myself from two days ago, from last week, from earlier this month. The tiredness from the week has slipped away, and I can tell I’m in the zone. I dodge a middle-aged couple and arc around one of the many people walking a dog—this one a small, white shih tzu. I start down the long, straight sidewalk along Parque del Oeste. 

Here is where I inevitably pass other runners. Sometimes I like to look at them, or other people. I notice all of the glances and stares. I observe. But this run I don’t look; this run is just for me. I look out onto Casa de Campo through the gaps in the trees. Music fills my ears and I push the headphone that has slowly started to slip out back into place.

Autopilot has taken me down the hill, onto the dirt paths, and back in the direction of Templo de Debod. Some runs my mind simply wanders, but mainly I just focus on my body. I feel the burning of my lungs. The weight of the heat. The tightness in my calves. And since last year, I focus on the ankle that has been problematic since my injury; putting extra attention into flexing it as normally as possible. I pass the rose garden on the last 200 meters of my run and take my obligatory look. I think the roses are actually in bloom now. I suck the hot, dry air into my lungs and sprint.

II. Time capsule

The big, clear box that had just gotten carried fifteen minutes through the city now sits on my floor. My things are clearly visible through the sides. I pop open the lid and put it aside. As my hands sort through the items, I think about the me that put them in there. The me that scrambled to organize and store and recycle and pack all of my things before my flight home. The me that tried to anticipate what I would have more immediate use for and what I could do without. I left two sweaters thinking I would be back for them in the winter. I didn’t know I would spend fall in Southern California, half of winter in Ann Arbor and then in Madrid, living out of my luggage. While the April air is still crisp, they could have been more useful to me a few months ago when clothes were worn layers deep. I put aside my two gray towels and the old pink and purple sheets my mom and I decided I could leave behind if I needed more room in my luggage on the return trip to the U.S. The backpack that was a birthday gift from my dad. A COVID test that I hope I’ll never use. The small sake cup, painted with a blue bonsai tree; the one whose matching pair sits in my ex-boyfriend’s house a continent away. Temporary tattoos of butterflies and stick-on gemstones from my time teaching at a primary school here in Madrid. A matryoshka doll that I bought alongside my friends in Oporto. I chuckle as I get to the bottom and see that I had decided to leave some non-perishable food items behind. Always the practical Isabel. Tomato frito, quinoa, and tea. All the food for a balanced diet! With each item I take out I glimpse the “me” each of them represents. And I can feel the uncertainty that all the items together in the box meant for me on that July day last summer. I think about all the things that I have done and have happened since. And the uncertainty that persists, just in a different form. 

III. Friendship

Our shared laughter peels through our small kitchen that doubles as a dining room. We are doing the typical thing old friends do. Reminiscing. She names a memory. I name one. Our shared room sophomore year, the place our friendship shifted and deepened—the one that was also an attic. Our two story apartment, during COVID, senior year, that we thought was so novel for its staircase. Our amazing group of friends and the multitude of nights we all spent together in the many corners of Ann Arbor. Her birthday that August where we all got soaked from the rain on our way back home from our go-to club. Our trips to San Diego and La Paz and Tenerife and… I remember her at all those stages. I remember myself. And I remember us and the way our relationship has morphed through the years. Now we are once again living together. It's the fourth year we have done this. This time in an apartment in Madrid, where we often both sit on our balconies in our own rooms and talk over the railings to cross the ten feet that separate us. I can’t help but think about our future selves sitting together in an unknown location, at an unspecified time, laughing about the times we spent together here. 

IV. Conclusion

When I am running, I am hyper-present, focusing on my body and how it feels. But I also observe everything in the context of the past: how I felt during the former times I ran, how I know the ins and outs of the route through routine, and how my past injury continues to affect me today. When I open my box of things, I not only see the past versions of myself in the items, I also reflect on the future me who will see, touch, and use them again. And when I reflect on my enduring relationships, I think one of the most special things is that you get to see each other at so many different life stages. You form new memories together, you watch each other make decisions, and you jointly transform your bond through the years.

Often during the most vivid moments, I exist as all three—past, present, and future—all tangled together in the web of experiences that is my life. It is in these moments that time collapses and I can touch and feel, most vividly, the me of before and the me that will be.