TIME

Last week I watched a PBS special on their NOVA channel, it was called “The illusion of time” with the physicist Brian Green.  He started out by saying that time is something that everyone knows about until you ask them to explain it.   I know how I feel about it but I probably can’t explain it either.  I feel  its preciousness, the moments passing , the end of a day approaching.  Sometimes its just the end of a time I’ve given myself to be free.

Today I have nothing scheduled on my calendar.  Nothing at all and this is very rare.  I am staying in my PJs  because I can…sitting cross legged in bed typing on my new iPad looking out on the Provincetown bay .   I am enjoying a cup of my Gano Cafe made with both coffee and special mushroom extracts ~not that kind of special~.  This is a perfect time.

Brian Greene talks about how we are obsessed with time, past and future especially, rarely the present moment.  The way we came up with our concepts of time was by observation.  As human beings we noticed that the light changed during the day and the sun seemed to move in the sky.  At night we saw the same configuration of stars and began to notice the moon rising.  Eventually our science let us know that the earth was rotating and we could call a full rotation one day.  Then by the appearance of the sun we could call its position in the sky a particular time.

The thing was, since we were arbitrarily naming certain positions of the sun as noon or three in the afternoon or dawn or six am, we began to organize ourselves around it and instead of just rising when the sun rose and tucking in when it went down, we  began  putting ourselves on an arbitrary schedule.

The arbitrary schedule was different in different regions and when trains came along we had to set a  clock that everyone followed so they could know in one town to the next when to expect the train.  And so our modern lives tied to being on the right track at the right time with no care for the sun, the moon , the stars or the tides all of natures ‘clocks.”

The program went on to delve into time travel through worm holes and black holes and time folding in on itself.   Apparently the math equations don’t rule out that everything is happening in the same moment and theoretically we can experience past as present and future as present if we understood how to access it.

Instead of being curious about my past or my future, I find myself in this moment loving living in a place where low tide means on friday’s and sundays you can go out clamming near the breakwater.