A Different Infinity

Driving yesterday, I listened to NPR to pass the miles.  A man spoke of a “different infinity”, where the space between becomes the measure of things.

Infinity presupposes some sort of measure, doesn’t it – this notion of a limitless sequential procession of the numberliness, the orderliness, of things.

I like the notion of a different infinity.  That’s what eternity is in my understanding – limitless, like infinity – but there the similarity ends.

But this side of that equation, I am stuck with infinity, only barely able to imagine eternity – that whole through-a-glass-dimly thing Paul describes so eloquently.

So the different infinity I inhabit just now is the infinity of moments . . .

Learning of my mother’s car accident on her way to visit me for a few days, I spend eons waiting for the phone to ring with the latest news – inhabiting the trough of time passing ever-so-slowly.

Frustrated with my inability to travel to her due to the crazy weather all round me (even as the sun shone above the skies I inhabit), time moves too slowly and too quickly all at once.

Determined, the next day I set out on a course that literally circumnavigates the weather pattern, circling ever closer to my mother in hospital, finally arriving into the arms of waiting family.

The excruciating minute by minute passing of the drive time concerned not with the view or journey, but only the destination in mind.

Rubbing Mom’s ice-cold feet with lotion.

Sitting at bedside, watching the monitors.

Listening to the beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . pronouncing life, but life in trouble . . . seconds stretch into centuries.

Sleeping on the cramped couch then the floor, the night creeps and flies.

And who knew how excruciatingly long the Three Stooges episodes are?  And exactly who is in charge of the television choices in the waiting rooms of the world?  In this one, quite small, there are actually two (competing) televisions – until I stepped out of the infinity-ness of this existence and turned one of the damned things off - who needs infomercials at 2 a.m.?  That’s the thing about infinity – whether it’s the same old one we (think we) know or a different infinity entirely – its just so . . . infinite. . . infinite in its tiredness . . . in its sameness . . . in its troughs . . . in its tick, tick, ticking off . . . one moment inexorably following another . . . until it doesn’t – turns out infinity isn’t infinite at all.