Disobedience to Time

So, on Sunday, April 2nd, I ordered the clock forward by one hour.

I was, after all, the mistress of TIME.

A gesture that I now find futile.

Much as I would like to think of this Sunday clock-reset as having occurred "two days ago", because the clock now tells me that it is 12:39 on the morning of April 4th, 2006, my body still insists that it is 11:39 on the night of April 3rd, 2006, and that this "time change" occurred "yesterday".

Who should I believe?

That imperious double-handed demon on the wall, or this reliable, and oh too too solid flesh that I am wearing as my "self"?

Can you guess who I am going to believe?

I have talked a bit about the tyranny of measured time in the past, so I won't repeat that rant here.

But this is more than the "to do" list. This seems directly tied to time, and my consciousness of time "its"self.

For the past couple of weeks, I was waking at 5:45 am (just about the time the sky lightened enough to let me know that this wasn't just a middle-of-the-night pee wake up). I would look at the clock (this time, not a two-handed bastard, but the digital type) -- I would see "5:45" and think "that is WAY too early to be up", and roll over until a "decent" hour. WHY?!?!

Now, having set the clock forward, I wake at 6:45 and think the same thing -- "that is WAY too early to be up". WHY!?!?!?!

What is this?

And now, it's nearly one AM, Pacific Standard time, or 3 AM, Central Standard Time, or sometime around 10 am "tomorrow" in Tel Aviv.

Because of where I live on the globe, I think it's either "late", or "very early", but two days ago, I would have looked at the clock and said "Well, it's not midnight yet".

I have been working with the concept of "it's the time it is", and fending off the demons of "you ought to be in bed by now", and/or "you ought to be out of bed by now".

Are Western Society's cogs really greased by this -- the time I (or you, or anyone) go to bed and the time that I (or you, or anyone) get up?

When I examine my self-imposed time-tyranny, I wonder where I got this idea.

I do think that it's natural for (some) animals to go to bed when the sun sets, and rise when the sun rises. (No, not all animals -- for example: felines, lapines, etc., who are diurnal and long to hunt and forage in the pre-dawn and post-sunset twilight.)

But I don't WANT to go to bed at sundown.

Maybe.

I think that I don't want to, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Oh, there it is again, that oh too too solid flesh.

Maybe my body would love to lie down with the sun, and rise up with it, regardless of the two-handed bandit, and the digital punisher.

I simply don't know.

---- Next night, April 4th, 12:25 pm (same dilemma, different night)

Okay -- to continue. I just re-read the post I started last night (at about this same time -- hovering toward 1 am), and found that when I reached that phrase: "I simply don't know", that I felt strangely comforted by it. I feel glad that I don't know.

I've heard some elders say that the longer they live, the less they think they know anything, and tonight, during class, Carruch asked those present "What is usually, in your society, the most bored group of people?" Most of the class answered aloud -- "teenagers". "Why?" Carruch asked. "Because they think they know everything," (or something similar to this) came from several members.

How ironic. Could it be that the search for knowledge is actually more interesting than the knowledge itself?

Could it be that my notion of Time is more interesting -- perhaps even more real -- than Time itself?

I have watched time shift with my perceptions. I have watched it scrunch up into a tiny, precious bit that I think I have to fight for, or expand into a tedious burden that I think I have to deal with, or disappear altogether.

In 16 minutes and 3 seconds, the clock on my computer will tell me that it is 1 hour, 2 minutes, 3 seconds, of the 4th month, 5th day, 6th year of the 21st Century. 01:02:03 04/05/06 .

I'm going to "wait up" for this -- like a little New Year, or the turning of the odometer to 100,000 miles. Maybe that is the root of my unruly sleep patterns -- maybe I've been in training for the past few days so that I can be awake for this moment.