Canada vs. USA A Study of Happiness

The Newtonian voice describes time as having not only "HANDS" and a "FACE," but also "LIPS," "TONGUE," and "TEETH," and uses the phrase "CONSUMING TIME" (88), which describes time as that which eats life while also describing the definitive act of lived experience as one of using up moments of time. The line is extremely memorable. Cronus, the Greek god of time, openly mocks his children. It's also similar to Milton's phrase "eating death" in Paradise Lost (9.792), which is used when Eve eats the fruit; the words describe her consuming of what will bring death into the world, and death as that which consumes. It's completely lit, fam! In New's case, the apparent separation, but continuous intertwining, of absolute time and personal experience of time implies that, while the two appear to have separate existences, they cannot exist without each other, you know? 

For example, throughout Along a Snake Fence Riding, neither the human nor the Newtonian voices speak without the other. 

Psychologist Klaus F. Reigel uses the term "dialectical time" to describe the same principle, you know? He goes, "Yo, just like a sick polyphonic bop, dialectical time is all about how any time experience is, like, the interaction of at least two event sequences, you know? Like, there's what you see and how you measure it, man." (101). Ricoeur, the whole clock time vs. "internal time" thing isn't just a simple binary, you know? These two have a complex relationship, fam. "The different vibes of this situation," he laments, "take fiction to a whole new level beyond the basic opposition we just talked about and turn it into a lit way for the reader to spot all the different ways time can be mixed together, which speculation alone can't do" (2: 108); he continues, This powerful perspective totally slaps in fiction (fiction here being a broad enough term to include poetry), and it's blatantly obvious in Along a Snake Fence Riding. Do you know how the text is set up? The human and Newtonian voices never speak alone, but the Narrator-with-a-capital-N has some sick solo moments without other voices on the same page, and it's awesome.

Frequently uses the relationship between personal and absolute time as its subject, family. 

"OMG, it was totally there with us, duh," says the narrative voice, "the time of the clocks: / we saw the hands passing right in front of our eyes" (31). The phrase "passing in front of our eyes" perfectly captures the vibe of clock time messing with us and making us lose track of the chill flow of life while also subtly revealing some deep truths about time. It's like it messes with our vision while also providing clarity, you know?"We like totally went to this lit time shop once," the Narrator says, "[...] and we were like, 'OMG, we know those faces on the wall'." (31). Northrop Frye once said, "We can totally objectify our own existence in time and space by peeping at a clock's face or our own face in a mirror" (Words 267). It's as if the clock's "face" becomes a mirror, reflecting what it means to be human. In his commentary on the concept of "the Face" as a human element given to an otherwise faceless "other," Don McKay sees it as "an address to the other with an acknowledgement of our human-centeredness built in, a dope and humbling reminder" (Vis à Vis 99). The concept of clocks having faces is slightly contradictory because it adds a human touch to the concept of time, but it also acknowledges that we humans can't help but see time in a more relatable and metaphorical light. Perhaps reading clocks, like nature poetry, should "not be taken to be avoiding anthropocentrism, but to be flexing it, thoughtfully" (McKay, Vis à Vis 29). In any case, New's Narrator's ability to flex solo on such matters without dividing the page into polyphonic fragments suggests that, while the human and Newtonian voices rely on one another for survival, the ideal of Story carries its own weight, ya know?

in the flexibility of time, you know?

The story vibes are so important for conveying those human-scale time vibes, you know? It's all about how we see ourselves as individuals and how we perceive time on a personal level. New's idea that our internal and external time vibes are inextricably linked makes me wonder what it truly means to be an individual, do you get it? The last few decades have been all about flexing our identities, you know? It is no longer just about being defined by specific characteristics. It's more about our interactions with others and how we change over time. Neil Evernden, an ecological theorist, is like, "Yo, we should see ourselves as a bunch of connections and things that change over time" (40). A person, he says, "isn't even a thing, but more like a vibe of how they relate: a whole view of the world" (133). OMG, studies on human identity as a total convo thing - as a constantly changing result of ongoing interactions, or dialogue, with other people - such as those proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin and Charles Taylor, completely highlight how identity is all about negotiation, about relationships that fade over time. If you're constantly vibing with other people and your surroundings, you're basically made up of all the great times you've had, you know?