Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Been thinking about time today, and I think it’s time to post a song that is about time. This one streamed into my thoughts.
Honestly, I couldn’t remember what year it came out, or the performer. I know the lyrics, though, and that was enough to find the song in this Internet age.
Turns out, it’s performed by the Chamber Brothers. It came out in nineteen sixty-eight, when I was twelve. It’s called, “Time Has Come Today”.
It’s like the atmosphere, the oceans, or the universe, or the human body. We see it, and think of it as one big thing, but eventually, we learn of its multiple structures and complexities. Details emerge, and it turns out to be more complicated than originally guessed.
In this case, I’m thinking about time. I woke up saturated with dreams and thoughts. That fodder contains powerful stimulants. I was pushed, or pulled, into a favorite subject. I think we look at time wrong. I conceive of multiple kinds of time beyond the basic arrows of time. Someday, someone will drill into time and discover these different levels. Besides organic time, which drive the life cycles of life, and other time types, like natural science, cosmological, and quantum time, we’ll discover small and large types of time, and a type of time which interacts with other types of time, accelerating and slowing it, causing new bonds, and breaking other bonds. Like the seas, atmosphere, and cosmology, we’ll discover unique structures of time within other oceans and streams of time. We’ll find that what’s embedded in these flows of time influence the flows’ dynamics and interactions. We’ll find that time isn’t pure. Cosmological time will be found to be like the salinity of the oceans, and the salinity of the time stream compounds the physical manifestation of time for the other types of time and their streams.
Someday, humanity will look back at how we think of time now, and have a good laugh at how simple and naive we were.
I enjoyed this PBS article regarding the arrows of time. The article points (sorry, couldn’t resist) to conclusions I achieved on my thinking regarding the arrows of time formed when a wave-function collapses, back in March, 2017, when I filled twenty pages in my lab notebook with scribbling, after doing several days of research.
Of course, my writing is predicated on thinking and conclusions physicists developed through decades of thinking. I was just building on the backs of others. This article helps with confirmation that the thinking is sound.
My writing and thinking was part of the development of the Chi-particle. A Chi-particle has imaginary mass and energy, and travels faster-than-light, gaining real mass and energy as it slows. It’s also a necessary device for “Incomplete States,” my current trilogy in progress. Book One (“Kyrios) is nearing completion, while Book Two (“Moment”), featuring space-pirates, is almost finished. That just leaves Book Three!
Lots of fun to think and write about these things.
The best thing about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the December holiday triumvirate in America is that they make it difficult for November and December to sneak up on us. It’s hard to be unaware of the calendar with all that commercial preparation – advertising, music, and sales, repeatedly presented at high volume – taking place.
That’s the trouble with August in America: no real holiday to mark the calendar. Sure, we have Labor Day at September’s beginning, but it’s one of those nebulous Federal Monday holidays. People often ask each other, “When is Labor Day this year?”, meaning, what day does Labor Day fall on? Then you hit that long stretch from there until Halloween. Days skim by on such untroubled water. Suddenly September has turned to October, and you’re playing catch-up with time.
It’s a game that’s hard to win.
The day was supposed to be a Thursday. That was the word from the calendar, and sources like computers, phones, and Fitbits. Other people asked, agreed, “Yes, today is Thursday.”
He remained unconvinced. The day didn’t feel like a Thursday. It didn’t feel like any proper day. His senses and thinking couldn’t penetrate the mask the day wore to see what day was under it. It definitely wasn’t Thursday. It didn’t seem like Friday or Monday. Distinctive in their feel, he thought he would have known them. Nor did it seem like a holiday behind the mask. Each holiday had its own uniquely cultivated taste and sound. He was certain that a holiday couldn’t be completely and successfully masked against his awareness.
Could it be Sunday behind the mask? It seemed out of character for Sunday. In fact, of all the days, he would expect Thursday to be the one that would pull a prank like this and masquerade as another day. Certainly it wasn’t something Saturday would do; Saturday was too full of itself to pretend to be another day.
An odd idea came to him. He had nothing to tell him it wasn’t Thursday behind the mask. If it was, Thursday was masquerading as itself, but doing a poor job of it.
He considered why that would be, why Thursday would want to pretend it was another day masquerading as itself. Doing a poor job of it would make him distrust everything about the day.
That was it. One of the days was up to something, and the way they were going about it was inculcating distrust in all of them. He looked around the day with sharpening suspicion, wondering which day could be, and what was going to happen. Whichever day it was, it was a cruel, cruel thing the day had done. If a day couldn’t be trusted, what would be next? Gravity? Sunshine? Time? That was all that he needed now.
Looking to the future with dread, he looked to the past with doubt, and stayed wary about the present, certain something else was about to happen, and completely unprepared for what it was going to be.
Moving singing walking dancing choking sleeping eating
Thinking breathing hearing feeling seeing
We hunt the rhythm and listen for the chords
Trying to do the things that need done
To keep what we need
Get what we want
And strive for what we hope for
Kisses go unfelt
Words fade unspoken
Skin is left untouched
And dreams wither
But we go on
Because there’s too much time left to stop
The time currents are battling, splintering our hearts, minds, and senses. Would that we could do the time warp and find that place of comfort we think must exist.
Back in nineteen seventy-five, less than a blink of the galactic eye, pop culture was thrown into a spin by “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” They say it happened on August fourteenth of that year. If I could do the time warp, maybe I could ride a wave, return to there, verify that date, and breathe in the mood. On the other hand, a sliver of cerebellum thinks I’m still living and existing back then, feeding streams of knowledge across the void to me here and now. Alas, contributing to the confluence of confusion, multiple mes are feeding multiple mes, including this me, from multiple moments in my existence to create this big shiny moment that I think of now.
Oh, the hell with it. “Let’s Do The Time Warp Again.” It’s just a jump to the left, and a step to the right.
April trickles into May.
May flows into June.
June bursts into July.
July explodes into August.
Time accelerates throughout the year, racing past itself in a star-spangled red-blue shift, catching itself to devour its tail, squeezing the breath out of those of us trapped in the middle.
Okay, I’m coming out.
It’s true confessions time. I suffer from the ravages of a condition that affects everyone. Most of us struggle to cope with its impact, and most of us fail. This condition will kill more Americans, indeed, more people, than anything else in the world, except, maybe life. We call this condition, time.
Humans deny time’s effects because of the work of time-deniers. Time-deniers will tell you that there’s nothing we can do about time, and spend huge sums of money to promote and reinforce their beliefs. They want us to believe that we have all the time in the world. Statements like, “Sure, I have the time, I can do that,” and, “I’ll make the time,” permeates our popular culture. When someone pushes back, “I don’t have the time,” others immediately become edgy, asking, “Are you sure?”
Because of the time-deniers, time and its effects are not seriously addressed. Indeed, many popular culture avenues mock the problems with time. “Time is on our side,” Mick Jagger sang, while clearly knowing – I mean, have you seen him recently? – that time is not on our side. Jim Croce understood the problems with time, and wished for time in a bottle. Styx, clearly being ironic, sang, “Too much time on my hands.” Chris Martin of Coldplay understood time, noting in the hit song he penned, “Clocks,” “Confusion never stops, closing walls and ticking clocks, gonna come back and take you home.”
We pretend to do something about time by constantly measuring and marking its passage. This lulls us into a false sense of security that we’re safe from time. Yet, we’re not. Time waits for no one, but because of the time-deniers’ work, few people in the world are attempting to do anything about time. Yes, there are individuals and groups struggling to kill time. Most have limited results. Instead, most end up keeping time, or marking time.
The time has come to push back. The first step is to recognize that time is a problem. The second step is to recognize that we can do something about time. To do that, we must quantify the problem. Time inequality is just one visible but large aspect of the issue, and it’s a good place to start. Some people have too much time on their hands, while entire races, nations and segments of people keep running out of time. Why should we let that continue to pass? Surely, we, as an intelligent species, can come together and redistribute time more equitably among all.
You can help. I’ll be posting a petition to the world’s governments, political leaders and technology titans to form a consortium to fight time. Please, sign the petition and spread the word. Socialize our cause. Help stop time before time stops you.
We’ve reached day one hundred fifty-three. Hump day’s pregnant belly is becoming visible over the horizon, that day on which half of this glorious year commonly called twenty seventeen will be completed.
Completed. Done. In the rear-view mirror. Under the bridge. In the books. Finished.
Which will mean, writers, you will have half a year remaining to accomplish those tasks, goals, objectives, and plans you established for yourself somewhere back in the neighborhood of day one.
Think about what you’ve done.
Consider what you want to do for this year, and then put this year in the context of the other years of your life.
How does it look?
Michael Seidel, writer 