Time
Time has no need to be merciful, and at any rate, all it can do is pass. Its passing is felt in pauses: when I realize I have been on 9gag for the better parts of three days, when I could - and should have been - doing anything else. While wasting it, it remains wasted to us, and to those priorities that remain unchecked in our tick boxes; and having wasted it we pause to reflect on its having passed. Its passing is felt in pauses, pauses that do not pause the passing of time, but pauses us in the wasting of it. In our pausing we become more aware of how time passes: time can do nothing but pass, no matter how we pause. Its passing is felt in losses: I remember a friend whose mother died a few years ago. In the death of anyone we know, time looms large; it is a reminder that does not need a reminder - which does not need any toll - for it is that which makes presence, and therefore, absence. Death does not stop time for those still in it; death only stops time for those with n