I used to find the elasticity of time scary. The things you learn in physics class: the theory of relativity and all the ways in which time and space gets bendy. That stuff is easier to digest now, though, and I find it instead funnier and scarier how it is that time plods. Part of time's tyranny is that it's one second--whatever--at a time. It's liquid because it plods. Can't stop it, cant start it, can't change it.

It is weird--exhilarating--disgusting--cool--scary--funny--to discover more and more as I get older that truly nothing is ever done but one thing at a time.

We multi-task, we put our heads in the sand, we fly along when things are good, time grinds by when things are awful, the trip back from somewhere is faster than the way there, but basically it's one thing at a time. Always one thing at a time.

So that means:

- thinking about the idea of running a marathon
- putting one step in front of the other during training for a marathon
- watching a movie about marathon runners
- putting one step in front of the other during your first marathon
- worrying about your ability to run a marathon
- watching marathon runners go by from your car
- putting one step in front of the other during your 12th marathon
- sadly fingering a trophy for winning a marathon and wondering if you'll do it again
- painting a fugly LeRoy Nieman ripoff of marathon runners

etc.

...all happens one thing at a time, every one of those. That fact's really scarier to me than donut holes in the time-space continuum. But there is also a lot of possibility in it.