Saving the Day . . . Light, and Other Temporal Anomalies

Don't you just love that phrase . . . "Temporal Anomaly"? With a nod to Jean Luc, I am also partial to combining the words "tachyon", and "pulse".

Because if something is going wrong in your life, you can blame it on a localized temporal anomaly, and you can simply deal with it by changing the modulation of your tachyon pulse. If it's good enough for Data, Wesley, the utterly-testy Deanna, and the serenely-centered Guinan, it's good enough for me.

Today we taught a class, which started at 10 am (which was really 11 am), and most of the folks that checked in talked about the wonkiness of Time in recent weeks. They weren't just talking about the oddity of setting the clock back "just because we agreed to" -- they were talking about the oddity of Time itself lately.

For me, Time has been in a strange state of flux for the past couple of years. It has seemed very elastic, compressing and expanding at unexpected intervals, and the weirdness just seems to be getting weirder as the hours, days, weeks, months, and years tick off.

This week, I had two days in which time stretched out like my cat in front of the radiant heater -- it got long and thin and slow -- during an interval when I didn't expect this. I was very busy on both these days -- days that I had no scheduled work such as session or class -- and usually, when I'm very active on my "days off", time seems to compress down to the tiniest and most fleeting particles imaginable. I was grateful to luxuriate in that slow-passing Time -- I kept looking at the clock and thinking "Wow! Great! It's only 1 pm!" "Wow! Great! It's only 1:15!"

Carruch gave us an assignment several weeks ago to "turn the clocks against the wall", which I did, for the most part -- I covered the clock on my computer with a sticky, turned the old timex around, and just set alarms for the stuff I needed to do on a time line.

It drove me absolutely, stark-raving crazy.
I was surprised.

I realize that my relationship with the clock is, to some extent, simply an exercise in self-torture. My life is such that I often don't have to be ruled by the clock -- yes, I have sessions at a certain time, and circles, and classes, but much of my time is self-governed, relying on no appointment or rigid schedule. (This doesn't mean I don't do a lot -- I just get to do it on my own organic schedule for a good part of my days.)

Still, I look at the clock compulsively, measuring my life by it. Even now, before me, below this post, there is a little "Time" and "Date" meter that tells me when I first started posting on this entry. It reminds me that I sat down to start during a lunch-break today, at 1:43 pm, and it is now 7:40 pm -- which I know because another little clock in the lower left of my computer screen keeps me ticking along with the agreement. (Yes, I took the stickie off -- I just couldn't bear not knowing, somehow).

I have been told by those older than myself that time continues to accelerate as you get older. Yet I believe that the compression I'm experiencing lately (it seems like so much happens in a single day) is beyond that. I seem to be transforming and changing so quickly, and being impacted by such a huge variety of experiences in any given period, that I am hard-pressed to assimilate it all before the next transformation-wave hits. Even younger folks that I know are reporting this, so I'm not sure it's just an age-thing.

But why am I so fascinated with knowing what time it is? Why, after we had turned the clocks around for days, was I still glancing up to the discolored spot on the wall where the bedroom time-piece used to rest? What the fuck is so important about knowing the time of day, even on days when I have nothing on my calendar, nowhere I have to go, and nothing I have to do?

I think that in my case, it's just plain old freakin' fear. Yes, I said it -- The "F" word.

I'm afraid that if I go to bed too late, I'll be tired in the morning. I'm afraid that if I don't do something now, it will press on me later. I'm afraid I'll miss an appointment and someone will think I'm flakey. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid.

I think what I'm really afraid of is letting go of the thin thread of connection I have with the status quo. It's thin, and getting thinner. I don't really care how I dress anymore. More accurately, I don't really care what anyone else thinks about how I dress anymore. (I care deeply about whether the clothes I am wearing are comfortable and warm/cool enough.) I don't care to be polite, opting instead to be civil (treating others as I would like to be treated). I don't care if someone thinks I'm "cool" or "hip" anymore. I don't care if someone thinks I'm stupid. Some people would say: "She's really let herself go." And I have. Thank God.

I've let go of a lot of my attachments to the status quo agreement about how I "ought" to be.

So why do I cling to the agreement about "what time" it is?

If I completely let go of time, would I also be letting go of some extremely basic agreement about how humans must/should/ought to interact? Will I, in effect, become like an Alzheimer's patient, drifting in a continuum of my own definition? Will I be letting go of some primary way of affirming a collective reality, which we have agreed to mark with seconds, minutes, and hours, dates and days?

I've considered doing this. I've thought about not scheduling sessions at all, or not setting a specific starting time for circles and classes -- but rather sitting like a hermit in a cave, without time measurements, and waiting to see who showed up when, or who called when -- and letting my whims and waves of self-dom determine whether (and how) I responded to the knock on the door or the ring of the telephone. I may yet choose to do this.

How lovely to say, "when the sun is disappearing over the western horizon each day, I may sit to channel and to teach -- or I may not". How lovely to say "I will do sessions when I feel like it, and leave the scheduling to the Universe and the choice of those who seek my assistance."

How lovely.
How terrifying.

And how ironic, when I have just recently embarked upon the use of an "online scheduler", that not only "keeps" time with me, but with my clients around the world.

I think I am especially aware of the arbitrary nature of time today, when "we, the people" (at least the people who agree to) simply steal an hour of the day, and declare that "now it is 1 am rather than 2 am!" (Of course, we are good little beings, so we plan to gift this hour back to the day next Spring.)

I notice that the Sun takes no notice of what we have decided. Nor the stars, nor the moon.

I awoke with the sun today (a thing that is new for me since I entered my late forties -- as a child, teen, and young adult, I was the sleep-in queen).

I tipped my head back over the pillow to gaze out the east window at a reddening haze, and then, I looked -- at the clock. I realize now that this ritual of sequential glances is so ingrained that I was frustrated during the week that I turned the "alarm" clock against the wall. Staring at it's little plastic backside, I fought the temptation to turn it around, and something inside me raged against my ignorance of the collective measurement.

Today, however, I looked that tiny clock right in the face and said in my head: "Thank God! It's only 6:15!"

I burrowed into the covers again, relieved, and drifted back to my dream -- returning to the bookmark I had set in those other realms -- yes, I was still dangling from the ceiling, my right arm still entwined in a long silk scarf, and my "captor" still negotiating with me as to the quantity and type of my ransom, although I knew very well that I could slide out of my "bonds" at any moment. (Don't even get me started on my dream life.)

Now, it is 8:28 pm, Sunday, October 30th, 2005. At least, that's what time it is here. According to my computer. (And I trust her to know these things.)

In "olden days", it was Noon when the sun was in the center of the sky. "Morning" when the sun came up. "Evening" when the sun went down. No matter where you were.

I think the obsession with time in our culture may be traced somehow to the illusion of control.

Do we believe that if we can pin down: "Who knew what, and when did they know it?", we can somehow come to a sense of certainty about where power and responsibility must rest?

Do we believe that if we can contain time well enough, measure and meter and parcel it out, that perhaps we can make enough of it to satisfy all our stray desires, accomplish all our mad-cap schemes, or escape its restraints altogether?

Do we believe that by carving time up into smaller and smaller increments -- seconds or nano-seconds, that we have somehow multiplied and made more of it?

Why else would we use the term "keeping time" to describe a reliable clock? I believe that, like money, time has become a commodity that we are trained to "store" and "keep", rather than a resource we are taught to use well.

Today, for me, was long and short. I can remember that moment of waking as if it was mere minutes ago. Yet what stretched between now and then -- the discussion with my students of essential qualities, the soul's path, and the nature and purpose of death - seems impossibly large to have wedged between that brief red horizon and this blackened, windy night.

Tomorrow is Halloween. The time when the veil between the worlds is, reportedly, at its thinnest. Daring children, some who know us, some who do not, will grace our doorstep, expecting candy, which we have at the ready, even now. I will carve the two pumpkins that I picked out and have already named "Frank" and "Fritz", but whose faces linger in some creative nook of my brain, not yet manifest upon their wrinkled surfaces.

Does that tomorrow exist already? I have a picture of it in my mind.

Does the today that "happened" exist still? I have a picture of it in my mind.

And between them, there is this Now. The only thing I can truly experience.
And that Now is already gone, replaced by this Now.

Does what I say about time change time? Does what I think about time change time? Does turning my clock back change time? Does time exist at all?

Is time somewhere, laughing at us and our machinations? Giggling at our attempts to control, contain, or define it?

Ah, give me the sturdiness and steadiness of space/locus! At least it seems to stay put. But . . . . but . . . . as Carruch pointed out, many months ago -- I walk into my kitchen every day, thinking that I am returning to a location in space where I have been before -- yet that "place" on a little spinning ball called Earth has literally shifted its location, as the planet spins, and transits around the Sun, and as our Solar System itself moves through the Universe on the arms of our galaxy.

I think it's time for me to abandon all attempts at control, and surrender myself to the experience of this perpetual motion.

I've always wanted to travel, anyway.

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If you've been wondering why I haven't blogged since October 23rd -- well, I wandered into this localized temporal anomaly, you see . . . . and . . . . .