Time. I can have it. I can give it. It can be taken from me, or it can be allowed for me. I can save it and I can lose it. I can make up for its loss, or I can waste it. I can arrive when it is right, or be somewhere when it is wrong. I can even stop it, or it can run on so quickly that I could never catch up.

More obscurely, a stitch in it saves nine.

Time flies and yet drags, but mostly it simply passes. It could come again, or it might never come at all. I am a child of it, but I also end up quite out of it, even so. It can weigh heavily, or it can go unnoticed. It is money and it is free. We can have it down, but at some point it will be up. And it can be marked.

What follows is a phenomenology of marked time. In a world where everyone has the time for something or other, or yet does not have the time for any specific thing, marking time is of the utmost.

Author Bio: G.V. Loewen is the author of over 45 books on ethics, education, aesthetics, health and social theory, and more recently, fiction. He was a professor of interdisciplinary human sciences for over two decades and is now retired. Originally from Victoria, British Columbia, he currently lives on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.