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Category: time

Time Travel

Time Travel

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Pale Blue Dot (Earth from Voyager 1, 1990) Courtesy NASA

As mentioned below, yesterday I posted in the past. Though it was strange for me, for time travelers it was just another day in the space-time continuum. That would be those who zip to ancient Babylon in a wormhole, or who believe in the Many Worlds theory, which posits that everything that ever could happen actually has — in another universe.

“We have achieved a temporal sentience that our ancestors lacked,” writes James Gleick in Time Travel, a book he penned in his past, my (then) future. “No one bothered with the future in 1516.” In fact, time awareness was dim until the 19th century, and the phrase “turn of the century” wasn’t used until the 20th.

But once we had temporal sentience we could have time travel: H.G. Well’s Time Machine and Robert Heinlein’s Time for the Stars, Ursula Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven, Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life — and scads of other books and films, including “Dr. Who,” the original of which debuted shortly after Time Machine was made into a movie.

What was most fascinating (but difficult to understand) was the physics behind the yarns, the fact that time travel, though it remains science fiction, cannot be totally ruled out according to some interpretations of the universe. Or, as Einstein said, “People like us who believe in physics known that the
distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

One might wonder why we need time travel in an age of cyberspace.  “All answers come down to one,” says Gleick. “To elude death.”

(This entry was posted in … the future.)

Auto Pilot

Auto Pilot

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It’s below freezing here with a sky that means business (snow business). Birds flit from feeder to roost, keeping warm, I imagine. That’s what I’d do if I were a bird.

Instead, I sit in a warm room observing my feathered friends, trying to work up the enthusiasm for a morning walk. Will the temperature rise past 32? That might trigger some movement on my part. Otherwise, I may have to sit a while longer, have another cup of tea.
Absent from the blogosphere for two days, I notice that the entry I thought I’d posted on Christmas Eve never published. Because I scheduled it for December 24, though, its time stamp makes it appear as if I published it on that day.
It’s a vote against auto-pilot … but a vote in favor of time travel. About which more will be said … in the future. 
To the Morning

To the Morning

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Thinking this morning of morning’s power, and of one of my favorite songs, which is about the morning. It’s by Dan Fogelberg, and was the opening song on Chicago’s WFMT when I lived there way back when, often the first sound I heard every day. Here’s how it goes:

Watching the sun
Watching it come
Watching it come up over the rooftops
Cloudy and warm
Maybe a storm
You can never quite tell
From the morning
And it’s going to be a day
There is really no way to say no
To the morning
Yes it’s going to be a day
There is really nothing left to
Say but
Come on morning
Waiting for mail
Maybe a tale
From an old friend
Or even a lover
Sometimes there’s none
But we have fun
Thinking of all who might
Have written
And maybe there are seasons
And maybe they change
And maybe to love is not so strange.

The Orchid

The Orchid

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One advantage of sitting near a bank of office windows is enjoying the plants the light makes possible. Look at this beauty, which has been blooming almost a month, it seems. I watched each papery flower emerge along the graceful stem.

The orchid’s owner received the plant several years ago when her mother died. Each bloom is a sweet reminder of her mother’s presence.

And now, because I know the story, the plant has greater presence for me, too, each day of flowering another bid for life. I’m pulling for the plant to live forever.

Civilized Pace

Civilized Pace

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Pre-dawn walks are becoming a habit. Made possible by early light, they remind me of early-morning runs when I lived in Manhattan. If I woke by 6:50 I could dash around the reservoir and be in the shower by 7:30 and on my way out the door at 8:00. By 9:00 or a little after I would be in my office sipping tea, nibbling a bagel and reading the Times.

No one arrived at McCall’s before 9:00 or 9:15 and no one bothered you while you read the newspaper — we were “looking for trends,” after all, so it was considered part of the workday. Ah, what a reasonable hour and civilized pace.

No one forces me to get in early now. It’s just the way I roll. But I like to remember a time when commuting meant hoofing it through Central Park, down Fifth, across 47th and over to Park.  Now that’s a walk!

(What I saw on the way to the office.)

High Latitude

High Latitude

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Woke up with the day this morning, knowing from the start it was the longest, vowing to spend as much of it as I can outside. I thought, as I was walking, of the gift of light, the extra hours of it, six hours more than the winter solstice by my rough count. Six hours more sunning and walking; six hours more to see and do and be.

“Solstice” derives from two Latin words “sol” and “sistere,” which roughly translate to “sun standing still.” And that is my wish today. That the sun stand still. That time stand still until I catch up with it.

I just read a passage from my favorite Annie Dillard, and my heart caught again on these lines: “I am here now … up here are this high latitude, out here at the farthest exploratory tip of this my present bewildering age.”

Life bewilders, age bewilders, time bewilders. But some days give us time to absorb that which bewilders. May today be one of those days.

(Sunrise on Chincoteague, April 21, 2016)

Leaving DLT

Leaving DLT

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Here’s a modest proposal: Given that Daylight Savings Time now lasts from early March till early November and we have only three full  months in Standard Time, perhaps we should reconsider our nomenclature.

Maybe we should call the time we just entered — which begins with cold, bright evenings and takes us through spring, summer and fall — Standard Time.

And those other outlier weeks — we’ll call them either Winter Time or Daylight Losing Time (DLT).

I know. It’s a negative message.

But isn’t it closer to the truth?

Carpe Season

Carpe Season

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These are days of high contrast: 70 degrees and cherry blossoms one day, 30 degrees and sleet the next. Are those petals or snowflakes?

Weather like this reminds me of what I should always remember but almost never do: Enjoy what you have when you have it. So much is out of our control.

I thought of this yesterday when I took a quick stroll around the block at lunchtime. It was warm with a balmy breeze. The jacket-less turned their faces to the sun. The al fresco diners ate salads on round, wrought-iron tables. A lone Tai Chi practitioner balanced two red balls on the top of his arms, slow-mo juggling.

We all knew the forecast. No lamentations for what was to come. Just joy at what we had right that moment.

Tick Tock

Tick Tock

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The house is as quiet as my house can be, which means that in addition to the blood rushing through my ears I’m also listening to the twitter of parakeets and the steady tick-tock of the cuckoo clock.

The “cuckoo” part of the clock has been long since been disabled, but the ticking mechanism remains. The metronomic beat of this timepiece is the soundtrack of my life.

On the rare day when the clock’s not wound, the stillness is deafening. I can hardly hear myself think.

Which raises the question: What has all this ticking done to my brain? Has it weathered it with pockmarks? Or has it smoothed and polished it, eroding those pesky irregularities that often stand in for real thought?

Into the Future

Into the Future

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Yes, we counted down the seconds last night. A room full of people with noisemakers and champagne and funny hats.  Out with the old and in with the new.

But for me, 2017 started with this winter morning, with the run I just took along familiar routes, waves to neighbors, music and talking in my ear.

And it started even earlier, with a cup of tea and my journal, reading last year’s entries, pondering resolutions, writing my way into the future.