If time is homogenous and empty, it can be filled with schemes that offer us a sense of futurity. (And thus a sense of purpose.) The clock, the calendar, and the newspaper conjure forth the days for us as a series of vacant vessels, waiting to be filled with projects whose results would manifest tomorrow. Or narratives whose resolutions would reveal themselves the day after. Or spiritual journeys that prepared the soul for an eventual epiphany, the Messiah, or the Final Judgment. This is how Walter Benjamin experienced the temporality of modernity, while in hiding some eighty years ago.

Eight months ago, Julio packed up the apartment we had shared in Cambridge, and we both retreated to spend the lockdown on hills at different parts of the world. The distance between our peaks was about 9,664 km. Projects we had started faltered. But unfilled vessels continued to line up. It turned out that time weighed more empty than full, because these vessels leaden with nothing were too heavy to lift. But after a few months, clouds like rocks filled the sky, and one Monday, they burst. The vessels filled quickly with rain water. It soon turned out they were made of uncooked earth, for as soon as they were brimming, they started to dissolve into mud. This returned the water to the earth, where through hidden channels we could not see, it flowed back out into the ocean.