Tag: time

Worth Mentioning

Thirty-two years after it was launched into space, the HST team celebrated the Hubble Space Telescope’s contribution to space exploration by publishing a photograph of five galaxies which are merging into one. Talk about a merger! This event is expected to take about a billion years to finish. I keep wondering, what’s the due diligence on something like this?

The five galaxies involved are called the Hickson Compact Group (HCG) 40, an interesting name for a progressive rock group. (Their music is probably spacy, doncha think?) Contemplating this information is staggering on many levels. One, that we’ve achieved the capabilities as a species to look into deep space and understand this. Two, that the event will take so long. Such patience is required. If I was one of the stars involved in the galaxy merger, I’d be, like, man, this is taking forever. Such is my response at a grocery store when I need to wait an extra sixty seconds because people can’t remember their PIN (no, I’m not looking at my wife), or my exasperation rising due to pages loading v e e r r r y s s s l l o o o w w w l l l y y y on the net. I can’t imagine waiting a billion years for anything, although it’s all relative, innit? Stars live longer than I do, so far as we know at this point.

So if you have the time and resources, that is to say, if you’re not suffering from food and housing insecurity, and you’re not a refugee from war, famine, or natural disaster, and if you have the net connections and a computer, in other words, if you’re a fortunate person in relative measure, it’s worth taking a few minutes to consider this far-away event. Helps add a little more perspective.

Cheers

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Lost: Time

I looked in the closet

Under the bed

And in the clothes basket

And couldn’t find the time

Maybe I’d left it in the living room

Or in the car when I was out the other day

Doing errands, like buying food

It could have fallen out of my pocket

While I was walking

Or taking a nap

So I’d better check the sofa cushions

I retraced my steps

But the time didn’t turn up

I challenged my brain to remember

If I’d loaned it to someone

Or maybe gave it away to the Goodwill

While Marie Kondoing my life

After a while

I tried reading a book

Thinking that maybe by not doing something

And freeing my brain from that weighty effort

Of finding the time

I’ll remember what I did with the time

Because I just can’t find the time.

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Another Airport Dream

I experienced three distinct airport dreams last night. Two were of the, ‘hey, I’m traveling in an airport’ style, once with my wife, and once without her. They were essentially just in the airport, milling around, waiting for my flights, without any events happening. The third was weird.

My wife and I were in our thirties and looked just as we would in photographs of that time. We were outside on asphalt, between low building with white siding. The buildings reminded me of military buildings erected in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Cyclone fencing encircled the site. Beyond were tall pines and firs in a sandy but flat land sketchy with broken asphalt and foundations where other buildings had been torn down.

We talked as we waited. I asked, “I wonder how much of this land and these buildings are going with us?” Because it was my understanding that they would fly us out by lifting the land we were on. I was struggling to visualize that process.

As time passed, we drifted into another area. Tall, fat, white, cylindrical pillars held ceiling up hundreds of feet above our heads. The paved area was open on all sides. People in knots, clumps, groups, were waiting all around although the center was clear. I walked around a while, looking, wondering when we were leaving, then found that I’d lost track of my wife. As I looked for her, I heard an announcement that our flight was ready and that we need to return to our places.

A stocky pale man with short hair, a red baseball cap, and a goatee asked, “Are you looking for your wife?” As I nodded and replied, “Yes,” he said, “She went to the Starbucks,” and pointed. I turned and saw my wife up on a platform, waving at me. Thanking the man, I walked toward her and waved her toward me, telling her, “Come on. It’s time.”

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Thursday’s Theme Music

The last Thursday of January, 2022, is upon us. We’ve already passed an entire month, as we’re now on the 27th. Does that seem too fast to anyone else? Who is in charge of the speed of time?

Sunrise hit like a bowling ball slowly rolling through the pins at 7:29 AM. Sunshine will flee the scene at 5:19 AM. It’s 44 F now but is expected to hit 61 before descending back down to 32 at night. A fine day, but I will tell you, it gets cold fast when the sun starts making its day-end run. I was with friends, outside, having a beer at 4 PM yesterday. All of us were dressed for it but that sun slide away and took all warmth with it. We dropped from 58 to 45 fast, and it wasn’t a friendly 45. What we endure for a beer with friends.

“Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass (1972) is riding my mind’s rails in the morning mental music stream. I can honestly say I don’t know why. It’s a song I know well from AM pop on transistor radios. It’s also showed up in a number of movies over the decades. Something about the song, a story with pop rock atmosphere, about a girl in a fishing village in love with a fisherman, settles into the mind groove and plays without offending. I also used it — twice — as part of the floofinitions when the floof-rock (flock) group Looking Floof and their hit “Brandy (You’re A Fine Pet)” was featured.

Here’s the music. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the jabs when you can. I need some coffee. See if that’ll help me match January ’22’s speed. Cheers

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Horofloof

Horofloof (floofinition) – Animal’s sense of time, ability to maintain a schedule, and their associated method of tracking time.

In use: “Humans are often amazed by their pet’s horofloof, especially when dogs go to the door to greet their returning people. Scientists speculate that this might be because dogs note that their people’s smell has faded. Animals, however, know that as an amusing theory; their minds are attuned to the cosmic view that lets them see beyond the immediate moment.”

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Friday’s Theme Music

Zounds. It’s already Friday again — Friday, December 17, 2021, to use its fully nomenclature. I’m staggered that it’s already Friday. What happened to the week? And, just two weeks remain in the month. Just two weeks remain in 2021. We are bolting toward 2022.

Okay, many respond. That’s how calendars work. How we hooman beasts track time for physical needs, work, and play. Why are you surprised that all this has transpired, Michael? Have you not been paying attention?

Nah, I think I pay too much attention. Maybe I need to let go about.

Ah, it’s sunshine streaming through blue skies obscured with filmy white ribbons. Fog is struggling to establish control, attaining some success among the trees in the mountain’s folds. Snow still reigns over the peaks and ridges, presenting them with a friendlier white majesty. Sunrise kicked in at 7:34 AM and is due to kick out at 4:40 PM. The temperature has climbed to 31 F. Should reach 44 F, which is about where we went yesterday, and is all in accordance with average expectations.

I was watching a small bird threading on and off a tree’s naked branches, a little sparrow beast. Neurons said, “I appreciate what that expression, ‘free as a bird’, means.” Because he was just going wherever, flitting about. Of course, he — or she — couldn’t see the sex from where I was — was in the elements, looking for food, a-flying and a-flittin’ to remain alive.

All that neural activity prompted a song to jump into the morning mental music stream. “Play ‘Free Bird’,” is a shout parodied in movies, but my neurons started jumping up and down, shouting, “Play ‘Free Bird’.” “Free Bird” is a song by Lynyrd Skynyrd that came out in 1974. 1974 is my high school graduation year, so this rocking song was my theme music for that year.

Keep rockin’, stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vaxes and boosters when ye can. I have my coffee, so if you’ll excuse me, destiny awaits. Cheers

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A Time Dream

First, one dream ended. All I remember of it was that Glenn Greenwald was mentioned. Then I discussed someone’s book. No details from that remain with me. In the end, I was trying to explain what I meant but couldn’t think of a specific word. I tried writing it on a white board and wrote in lower case letters in red, ‘threat’. Standing back, I said, “That’s not what I meant to write.”

But a new dreamisode began. I was studying with others. We were a small class, five, learning in an old farmhouse. The other students and I were talking and joking when we were supposed to be studying. I picked up the book to try again. The subject was macroeconomics and my interest in learning it was low.

The teacher, a young, short white man with a black beard, entered and asked if we were ready for our exam. Other students who were younger than us approached our farmhouse. My class watched them out the window. We discovered they’d taken the same course and had already finished the exam. Not only that, but they were ahead of us on lessons.

My classmates and I were dismayed. We were expected to read several chapters, amounting to hundreds of pages, in a few days and then pass an exam on it? I laughed. “I need more time,” I said to the instructor.

“How much time?” he asked.

I laughed again. “A few years.”

Dream end.

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