The Swell of 5 Minutes

 “This man had once been led out with others to the scaffold and a sentence of death was read over him. He was to be shot for a political offense... He had only five minutes more to live. He told me that those five minutes seemed to him an infinite time, a vast wealth; he felt that he had so many lives left in those five minutes that there was no need yet to think of the last moment, so much so that he divided his time up. He set aside time to take leave of his comrades, two minutes for that; then he kept another two minutes to think for the last time; and then a minute to look about him for the last time. He remembered very well having divided his time like that. He was dying at twenty-seven, strong and healthy... He said nothing was so dreadful at that time as the continual thought, 'What if I were not to die? What if I could go back to life - what eternity! And it would all be mine! I would turn every minute into an age; I would lose nothing, I would count every minute as it passed, I would not waste one!'" 

"You are very disconnected," observed Aglaia. "You probably meant to show, prince, that not one instant of life can be considered petty, and that sometimes five minutes is a precious treasure. That's all very laudable, but let me ask, how did that friend who told you such horrors... he was reprieved, so he was presented with that 'eternity of life.' What did he do with that wealth afterwards? Did he live counting each moment?"

"Oh no, he told me himself. I asked him about that too. He didn't live like that at all; he wasted many, many minutes."

―“The Idiot” first published serially in the Russian Messenger by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1868-69.

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Dear Alex,

There are rare moments when the ocean swallows up your 5 minutes of mourning. Your tears have nothing to do with loss, fright or melancholy. You cry out to the thrashing of waves on rocks because you are free to relent what is unfathomable to the unfathomable within these minutes.

Rare as raw as dawn, the ocean is not something you can grasp. It captures you at first glance before you twitch a tendon, spewing pretense out of you. In the nakedness of 5 minutes on shore, you drift to eternity in seconds that swell to rid you of pity. You cannot leave this place dry and fulfilled. I come away from 5 minutes with the ocean as if I have come though 5 lifespans of hunger.

In the least sensible spur of sanity, Dostoevsky split the last 5 minutes for his character: 2 minutes for his comrades, another 2 minutes to think and then a minute to “look about him for the last time”.

If a man shall lose his head within the budge of a clock hand, why would he save his final countdown to look around him? Does he seek for solidarity or mercy from the crowd or crown? Even if so, the grandeur of his last minute may reduce him to more despair. Or a tender face may turn to him and bid comfort. By looking around, you may waste your last sticky gaze at the world that has neither seen nor known you.

So the offender, the damned and cursed, lifts his eyes to meet the world, bowing before her exit, searching still in our vanishing moment to see and know who is out there surrounding us like the miracle of an ocean.

Yours, Kate