Sandcastles

Dear Friend,

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but by now I think it’s safe to assume that like you I’m going through relationship issues. It’s not too wild of an assumption. That’s the common denominator for all of us across nations and cultures and history, isn’t it? That we, in one way or another, are trying to work out some kind of tension within a certain relationship in order to reach a place of peace where we are more fully known and loved. That’s the case for me right now at least, and I’m hoping you can help. Because I’m stuck. This relationship I’m in is strong, it’s binding, it’s serious — it’s borderline toxic. There’s so much misunderstanding and confusion. I feel like it’s tearing me apart and I do my best to return the favor. We are each stubborn in our own ways and will not budge.

Leave, you say? But you have to know first there are also moments of happiness and bliss, instances when I really believe it’ll work out. Only, right when I get my hopes up, the serenity snaps and we no longer are seeing eye to eye.

This sort of cycle keeps happening and it can be damaging. I hope you aren’t experiencing this. Though at the same time I hope to find someone I can relate to.

At this point I might as well tell you: the relationship I’m talking about is my relationship with Time.

No, I’m not crazy (at least in this area). I’m just both frustrated and fascinated about this thing we live in. I wish to treat it rightly, but it seems I’m unable to. I’m either always stretching it thin or always stuffing it full. Can’t seem to find that sweet spot. The silver lining is that I find myself in good company here: it was Augustine in the fourth century who wrote, “I confess to you, Lord, that I still do not know what time is.”

On my end, this is because one of the defining features of Time is entropy. Entropy is rather dark, definitely a toxic trait and it prevents me from getting closer to Time, keeping me at arm’s length. Roughly speaking, entropy is how I track Time’s behavior, how I observe where it’s going — and it’s always going in one direction, pulling everything in the universe along with it, towards one end, towards a higher state of chaos, towards death. 

Please know I’m not here to lecture you, friend. I only know the basics of this. It’s complicated. It’s messy. But I want clarity, that’s why I write it out. Let me provide a picture, maybe that will help.

Remember the day you and I went to the beach and we built sandcastles? They were magnificent. Not for anyone else, sure. But for us they were. Because the sun was out and you and I were there. We were really there. The sad reality is, however, if you and I were to return to that spot, our sandcastles would be gone. They suffered the fate of every sandcastle that’s ever been built: Time has touched it, touched it with its winds and rains and took what we so nicely organized and scattered it along the beach so that our work is no longer distinguishable from any other grain on the shore. There is no remnant of our moment together. I wish we could go back to find that our work still stands, to find that our structures are intact and unaffected. But that’s not how Time treats the world. It only moves in one direction, remember? Towards a place where chaos overrules our design.

And so has everything ever moved. Nothing naturally on its own will ever ultimately move towards order. We know this. Unattended, our food turns into mold, our gardens are choked out by weeds, our possessions rust and rot. That’s why Time and I have this ongoing fight, because I’m trying my best to work against the chaos that it brings. I’ve been building sandcastle after sandcastle over the course of my life — not material monuments, but relationships I want to be found in, spaces and connections and ways of relating to people that are special to me. I try to keep it all neatly packed and close together, but no matter how hard I try, Time comes and does its damage, and I’m afraid my world will eventually fall apart. “Don’t touch anything!” I yell angrily while Time looks back at me with wide eyes, hands on every single thing I love. This argument gets especially heated whenever I visit home.

Now, I know you and I have had our fair share of discussions about the word “home.” It’s a peculiar one, mainly because people have so many different experiences of it. Whatever “home” is, I think we can agree that you can have more than one. Of course, I’m not talking about a house primarily, though a physical place is important. Rather, I’m more directly speaking about the people in whom home is embodied for me, made tangible, given a face and a voice and a name. They are the home that is changing. They are the sandcastle that is shifting.

Every year when I travel back to Texas, I see my grandma — my precious abuelita — move about the kitchen with much more of a limp than the previous year, because cancer takes a toll. I see my beloved mother; I look at her smile, I hold her hands and find more wrinkles than before. And my dad — my dad who used to run marathons — well, his pace is a bit slower now, his legs skinnier as well.

I can see frailty settling in. The tidiness and strength of the sandcastle I once knew is coming undone, and it’s Time that’s doing all of this. I shouldn’t have expected anything else, honestly.

So, do I finally end the relationship? Do I rub the lamp and ask the genie to stop Time, to freeze everything forever? No, no. How could I? Though I constantly complain about Time and wish it would leave me be, I, in fact, need it. Because as much as it wears us down, Time also allows us to live. As much as it is hostile, it also is hospitable.

I see this plainly when it comes to my nephew.

I don’t know if you remember me telling you, but I was there for his birth. Made it back right when my sister went into labor. To hold him as a newborn was a wonderful privilege — he was reaching out for someone to take care of him, eyes squeezed shut, crying. Now when I visit home ten years later, he tries to tackle me to the ground, he has a personality and preferences, and he speaks to me like a cognisant human being does. He asks me questions like, “why don’t you live here?” and “why aren’t you married yet?” (Some questions are easier to answer than others.) Time has allowed him the space to grow up, to breathe, to experience life, to become someone.

And even when I hold my mother’s hand, when I walk slowly next to my abuelita, when I talk to my dad, it’s different than before. It’s not just older, it’s richer. Deeper. Truer. Because it’s not me as an unruly teenager who wants to get away from them or a kid who is unaware of their plight. It’s me as a son in his thirties, who after living away for years cherishes them in a way that I never could back then. Time has allowed for the soil of my heart to be tilled, to open up to what they have to say, to who they are. Time has reframed my receptivity to their love. So I can’t hate Time completely, can I? 

But, of course, it’s not just them. I can’t view these movements objectively, as if I’m outside of it all. Because ironically enough I find myself as part of the sandcastle. Though I’d rather not admit it, I too belong to that which I try to keep together and prevent from crumbling. Quite selfishly, I’d prefer the world out there to be affected by Time and not I, myself. This is evident in my omissions, because even earlier in this very letter, I excluded the second half of the saint’s prayer. The full plea is as follows: “I confess to you, Lord, that I still do not know what time is, and I further confess to you, Lord, that as I say this I know myself to be conditioned by time.”

Conditioned by Time. That means I am not a passive observer. I am not a scientist examining statistics. I also have new wrinkles. I also am weaker. Yes, Time, as much as it has given me room to grow, has equally made its deteriorating mark on me. 

“All we are is dust in the wind,” you might sing to me. My own finitude shouldn’t come as a surprise, I get that. But I needed to get this off my chest before I try to face the even scarier reality, the one saying that beyond being affected by Time, I find myself taking on its characteristics. Too often I’ve pointed my finger saying, “Time, you messed everything up!” But my hands and my words have hurt others too. Many times over I have done what I swore I would not do, and by doing so, brought chaos to the world around me, rapidly aging my environment, unraveling the beautiful order those whom I claim to love established. Did I learn this from Time? Did Time learn this from me? If Time were the only one causing damage, judging this case would be a lot easier. But I stand as an accomplice in the crime of entropy. It seems we are more bound together than I originally thought. The more recent thinker Jose Borges supplies me with vocabulary for this paradox: “Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river that sweeps me along but I am the river. It is a tiger that mangles me, but I am the tiger. It is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.” Who then will ultimately receive the blame for starting the war? And who will receive the prize for bringing peace? I really can’t say.

I think by now you can tell the relationship is complicated between Time and me. We’re in a rough patch, to put it lightly. But I do have hope that things could eventually work out for us. I’ve caught glimpses of us living harmoniously — at my mother’s seventieth birthday, when my friends celebrated their engagement, when I was playing with my nephew, in between trains when you and I were waiting and it felt like the right thing to do. Time in these moments has been a gift, and this makes my heart dream: if we stopped fighting, what could we become? I once heard someone whisper, “Time was not made for death but for eternity.” If that’s true then maybe Time will eventually… change. Yes, I know everyone wants his or her partner to change. But what if there really were a physician of Time, someone to teach Time to not move only in one direction, but to dance around in circles, and to dive deep into rivers and invite us into the water as well? If that were possible, then maybe I could be changed too. Wouldn’t that be something? That I could reach a place where I give more than I take, where I slow down and write you more letters. Should I reach that state, perhaps we could go back to that beach and build more sandcastles, new ones that would stand forever. Or maybe, since we would finally have Time, we could reconstruct what once was, find what scattered about the beach and remake it, but with more care, with more hope.

Now I’ve certainly turned into that friend that only talks on and on about his relationship. I hope you don’t mind, friend. Please write back. Tell me about your sandcastles: what do you still plan to build? What has fallen and what remains strong? I wish to listen.

Sincerely yours,


S.N. 

Sandcastles was first presented in story telling format at Mezrab on May 31, 2024. Watch it here.