Tag: time

Each

Each day brings a new requirement to re-balance priorities, needs, desires and the rest.

Each week brings an increasing gentle awareness of time.

Each month brings a new assessment of what’s been done, what needs to be done, what hasn’t been done, what you hope to do.

Each season brings new requirements for clothing, repairs, vacations, work and celebrations.

Each holiday brings a new influx of decorations – ghosts, Santas, elves and reindeer – and renewed promises to clean out the previous collection of decorations. Each effort bring renewed efforts.

Each departure brings thoughts and reflections. Each arrival brings anticipation.

Each year brings fresh nostalgia and growing awareness of mortality.

Each morning brings a new hope.

Each hour brings a new beginning.

And each thought brings a new perspective.

Each time, it’s not the same.

And each time, you wonder how has it changed?

0

Drop That Now

Ready? Here we go.

Up worried about a sick cat. Naturally, that led me to think about time, space and reality.

I was thinking about Now. Now equals Reality for us.

But, I thought, Now does not equal Present. Now is a subset of the Present * Past * Future formula created by common agreement, which forms Reality.

Weirdly, though, as a group (referring only to the subset called humans, and only those ‘presently’ ‘alive’, to keep this simple), we approach Reality in accordance with Zeno’s paradox. Essentially, we’re all traveling toward the same moment, at the same speed (in theory), but we’re coming at it from different distances, because Now = Present * Past * Future. Which means, Now is constantly being reshaped by us as individuals, because we’re always shaping the Present, Past and Future.

Here’s an example for clarification.

You have a friend who is close to you. In a moment of Now, you remember the Past and create a Present by fantasizing a different Future for the two of you, one in which something changed. Perhaps you were close friends and in your fantasy, you’re now lovers. Maybe you were lovers but that ended badly so in your fantasy, you remain close friends and never ruined it by become sexually entangled.

That fantasy, of thinking of a different Past and imagining a different resulting Future, created a new Present. That Present spun off onto its own, to create another Now.

But –

Yeah, there’s always a but. The but here is that a new you exist in that new Now. Yet that new you is also your current, past, present and future you. You are all yous.

In that new Now, you think of your Present circumstances (the moment of Now), and the Past (that you created) to imagine a new Future, which becomes another Present, establishing another New. The ability to ‘hold it together’ mentally is keeping true to one Now, or being adept enough to juggle Nows so that their changing doesn’t disturb you. Most of us struggle with it, because it causes us imbalances from the “That’s not how I remember it,” syndrome, and the unglueing that springs up thinking of all of us Now. You’re remembering different Presents that happen to intersect into one Now, but the Now wasn’t exactly the same for everyone, because of Zeno’s Paradox.

As a fun exercise, imagine Now = Pr (Present) * Pa (Past) * Fu (Future). But Now creates a new Pr. Which means, by our formula, Now has changed, also changing Pa and Fu, establishing a new Pr and a new Now. And essentially, each of these Now is a string connecting us. Conceive of all the strings together and we grasp what it means to be the universe. But that’s only from the current, living aspect of humans, because, since we can imagine and re-imagine new existences, death isn’t a permanent state at all, but only a ‘natural extension’ of one Now.

Yeah, this is all old, the multiverse concepts of ‘everything that can happen, has happened’, with the added dimension that everything that can be remembered (or mis-remembered) can be re-imagined to add to more universes.

Of course, the other kicker is that true constants don’t exist. Time travels only in one direction in our Now, even though we act on it on another level to create other Nows (see above) and the Past is considered immutable (in our Now). Physical dimensions such as agreement on Length and Width also vary by Now, which, of course, are defined by Past * Present * Future. So, too, are constants such as the speed of Light (c) and the Theory of Relativity. They are not constants but agreed upon acceptances of what is Now, for this system of mass and energy which is Now. Quantum Mechanics are actually glimpses into the real state of being, where we begin to see how time, light and gravity act in ways counter to our Now. It is, actually, much more relative than we realize. I’m sure there are brilliant physicists out there that an explain it all a hell of a lot better, and probably have.

That’s all for Now.

7

Jealous of Time

I’m so jealous of my time, possessive of it, reluctantly sharing it with others, and grumpy when I do. Call Mom to tell her I love her and thank her for reading my last book? But that takes times.

Takes time. Steals time. That time can’t be returned.

No, I’m not doing extraordinary things with my time. Changing kitty litter. Playing computer games. Reading. Working on the biz aspect of writing. And that is work. Not fun, trying to squeeze money out of my words. I prefer the – wait, let me look it up.

My wife’s book club’s latest reading was ‘Norwegian by Night’. I love her for the way in which she reads these offerings, makes them her own and seeks information about the writer and the book’s genesis. In this case, she was also puzzled by the book’s title. She never found a good answer.

‘Norwegian by Night’ was a debut novel and attracted the fame and fortune that I sometimes fantasize about (okay, I think about it the way I thought about sex in my teen years). Naturally, I hate its author, Derek Miller.

No, ha ha, kidding. Really.

But while she researched, my wife found an interview with him and said, “You’ll like this. Listen. ‘The easy part, by contrast, was the exuberant pleasure that came from having no rules, no masters, no demands for propriety, diplomacy, or even collaboration. And frankly no consequences.'”

Oh, yeah, baby, that’s the stuff. To go back, I prefer the exuberant pleasure that comes from having no rules and master, and no demands, rather than that icky business side.

That’s why I’m jealous of my time, of sharing it. They are demands. I’m being held hostage, forced to conform, socialize, speak coherently and be polite, watch out for zombies, and obey the masters of culture and values, and I resist.

My wife ‘understands’ it to some degree, that is, she accepts the logic of me desiring and wanting to write each day. I think she feels it’s owed to me as well. While in the second half of my military’s twenty year career, I spit frustration daily about having to endure that damn macho stilted, reactionary bureaucracy when I could be writing. But I stayed in to get the pension, which admittedly, now, is worthwhile to have. Then we stayed in the pricey Silicon Valley – SF Bay area, as she was starting a new career, putting off moving to somewhere cheap where I could use my pension to fund my writing. And I put twenty years into jobs there, paying off bills, acquiring useful material goods like computers, and accumulating a ‘retirement nest egg’. Okay, good.

But damn, I wanted to write, and still want to write, and look back on all the energy shunted into other things and wonder what might be different.

Don’t we all, though? Go back and think on something, and wonder what might be different?

I could be more intellectual about this, make up clever quotes, or find brilliant insights into the nature of time and humanity, and metaphors about time and the stages of life, and youth being wasted on the young, but —

That’s not really me. That would be a pretender. I’m bare bones, stream of consciousness, sorry, the filter is broken, sort of writer. I call it organic, but it’s really me being lazy.

Enough of this. I’m wasting time.  I need to go write like crazy. It’s really the only dam I have against insanity.

 

By the way, Book Chewing’s interview with Derek Miller is here. Go read it. You have the time.

3

Driving in my Car

I was alone. Driving in my car, a dark SUV, which is not my car, but I had procured it for a dream.

Attempting to park, I broke the driver’s mirror and scratched the passenger side. I tried leaving the car but couldn’t open the door sufficiently to get out. I was too close to the rest.

I backed up, trying to create another plan. A black child was in the back seat. I didn’t know them. Apologizing, I told them to get out but took them for a ride to help them reach their destination.

Parking elsewhere, I learned I had a temporary room at a temporary location. I was in the Philippines. I was supposed to be leaving. I entered the building, cement with several floors. Going to my room, a military style modern barracks room, I discovered a mess. I wasn’t ready to leave at all. Opened and unopened cans of Fancy Feast cat food was everywhere. Most were chicken flavor. I attempted to collect and sort them into bags, to dispose of them, while also attempting to pack my clothes. I also found half-pints of unopened milk containers around the room. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them. I had no refrigerator, didn’t have any need for them, and didn’t understand why I had them. I couldn’t remember buying milk or cat food.

I was running out of time but strangers kept interrupting, and distant relatives dropped in to visit. I was trying to understand, did I bring my car here? If so, how did I bring it? If it was my car, how was I going to get it back to where I came from? I had airline tickets. The car couldn’t fly with me, could it? I found a picture of myself from the previous year a relative had taken and left for me to see. My photo disgusted me.

Pro football players entered. One was Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers quarterback. The others were famous players. They nodded greetings toward me but were talking among themselves. I don’t think they knew me.

I needed more information to help me decide what to do but there wasn’t anyone to give any. I raced around, in and out of my room and up and down flights of stairs through the cement complex with the cans, the milk, my clothing, dodging people, trying to comprehend what was happening with my car, trying to decide what to do with it, wondering if I could get more time to deal with it.

I awoke with nothing resolved, with the dream streaming through my mind, filling me with thoughts about potential meanings.

0

Personal Energy

I’ve been meditating for years. While once it was a formal variation of transcendental meditation I began back in 1976, my methodology now isn’t formal, but quiet, mindful thinking . I conduct it while walking (which is especially conducive), sitting, laying, whatever. Sometimes I’ll meditate when my sleep is disturbed. The meditation process puts me back to sleep.

My focus in recent years was about finding balance and not being negative. I considered being imbalanced and negative as by-products of working for IBM, so I meditated not to be angry, bitter, frustrated, despairing…you know, negative stuff. But nature doesn’t like a vacuum. Something needed to be injected in the place of those negative energies, otherwise they rushed back in. So I sought balance, trying to bring in positive energies, mostly through being more mindful about my reactions, decisions and behavior. I vowed not to permit others, including bosses and co-workers, to master me, but that I would master myself.

It’s been a challenge.

More recently, writing science fiction and thinking about time, reality and existence, I explored energy. It was also related to a modern mystery I was penning. Trapped, a person believes she is facing death, and examines her life, preparing herself to address her death. That pushed me to think about myself in terms of life and death, and how energy plays into being and consciousness. I figured, I have physical energy, but I also have mental and emotional energy. Of course, everyone says. Isn’t that obvious?

Oh, yeah, and creative energy. Yes, right, right.

And healing energy.

I can’t forget psychic energy.

And spiritual energy.

And actually, there are several types of mental energy…right…?

Thinking of spiritual energy diverted me into thoughts of God and religion. Ranging from agnostic to atheistic, but thinking there is something out there, just not a person or creature so many religions espouse, I accept I can have spiritual energy without worshiping a God or practicing a religion.

My meditations became about healing, repairing and restoring my energy. I decided while addressing the energies, I’d also attend to my third eye, figuring it had something to do with these energies, and also worked on cleansing my aura. I discovered that physical energy breaks down into more disparate types of energy. It probably won’t surprise you that as I conceptualized these energies, I thought of chakras and began exploring them.

Not having previous experience with chakras, but having some inkling about what they were (at least from posters, book covers and websites), naturally, I thought, the chakras are probably all about channeling, managing and coordinating these energies. Asking, why re-invent something if it already exists, I searched and read about chakras.

Chakras aren’t as straightforward as I believed. First, from what I’ve read, there are commonalities among chakras but not ‘standard’ chakras. But what I read resonated with my philosophy. I think of life, reality and my being as an individual as systems within systems, and that, from my opening examinations, is a large part of what the chakras are about.

All of this naturally extends from simple observations of life. Think of light, for instance. When considering light, we think of the visible light that we, as humans, see. But light visible to human is just one sort of light. Light has properties. The properties affect how we interact with that light, and how it interacts with us. Consider the sources of light, and how different each are, from the sun to a light bulb (which type of light bulb, you might respond) to your television and computer screens.

Fun thinking about such things. Add in thoughts about time (are you sure there’s just one kind of time, and that it’s uniform through everyone’s existence?), and you got yourself a par-tay.

But it’s a meditation party, and sort of quiet and introspective.

Time for coffee, and to write like crazy.

3

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